Transport Workers Solidarity Committee

AC Transit Bosses and Board Blames ATU 192 Drivers For Making Cuts In Service To Community

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/31/BAO31F5UPE.DTL
AC Transit pushes severe service cuts

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Michael Macor / The Chronicle
AC Transit will propose, among other things, slashing its weekend service by half and eliminating some overnight lines.

AC Transit could slash its weekend service by half, eliminate all but two of its overnight bus lines and shorten service hours on all routes in a series of budget cuts the transit agency is blaming on its drivers' union.

The East Bay's largest bus transit agency plans to announce the proposed budget cuts at its Wednesday Board of Directors meeting in Oakland.

The transit district, enmeshed in a battle with its largest labor union, had planned to cut service by about 7 percent this month but put off those reductions after a judge prohibited the agency from imposing working conditions, designed to save $15.7 million, on its drivers and mechanics, and ordered them to let an arbitrator settle the contract dispute.

AC Transit officials said that they now need to make much deeper cuts - slashing service to a level not seen in at least 24 years, perhaps ever - in December.

CA AFL-CIO Fed Endorsed Anti-Labor Mayor Newsom Attacks SF ATU 250 A Muni Drivers With New Fee-CA AFL-CIO And SFLC Endorsed Candidate For CA Lt. Governor

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/30/BAU61F4LNB.DTL
Time for Muni drivers to pay to park

Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross

Monday, August 30, 2010

MATIER & ROSS
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More Matier & Ross »
Muni drivers, who recently refused to forgo their legally mandated pay raises, are about to be hit with an $80-a-month charge to park their cars at work.

The new fee to park at Muni yards comes to $960 a year, or about a third of drivers' 5.75 percent raise.

Until now, drivers were allowed to park for free at the city's bus yards.

So were most of the transit agency's other 2,000 employees, who will be hit with the same parking charges, according to a memo that Municipal Transportation Agency chiefNathaniel Ford just sent out with everyone's paychecks.

Agency spokesman Paul Rose insists that "this is not about paybacks. This is about finding alternative ways to improve our service for our customers."

UK Tube workers' unions to meet over strike action

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gQgQjy-u9CoWRHkXw85U8IJ9e0ig
Hosted by Back to Google News
Tube workers' unions to meet over strike action
(UKPA) – 3 days ago
London Underground (LU) union leaders are to meet to draw up a possible timetable for strikes in a row over jobs, threatening disruption as the capital returns to normal working after the summer holidays next month.
Members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association voted in favour of a campaign of industrial action over plans to cut 800 jobs among station staff.
The executives of both unions will have to endorse any strike dates, but it is likely that action could start from September 6, when Parliament returns for a few weeks before the autumn political conferences.
Meanwhile, Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group, said LU was set to close ticket offices across the underground by almost 7,500 hours every week.
"London Underground and the Mayor are playing with words when they keep peddling the claim that no ticket office will actually close. The harsh reality is that if you can't access a ticket office for most hours of the day, it is effectively closed.

First Black Labor Union Marks Milestone
http://www.blackradionetwork.com/page.php?storyID=16263

First Black Labor Union Marks Milestone

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- On August 25th, 1925 the trajectory of African American and American history was changed forever. On that date, a group of Pullman porters formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, America's first African American labor union.

One of those porters, 99-year-old Linus Scott, described the job as "miles of smiles, years of struggle." This 85th anniversary celebrates the life and work of this remarkable group of men.

The founding of the Brotherhood was an important milestone in the labor movement, which had previously been all white. But more importantly, it laid the foundation for the modern civil rights movement, by proving that blacks could organize and achieve tangible results.

The Pullman porters worked on the Pullman train sleeper cars. They greeted passengers, carried luggage, made the beds, tidied the cars, served food and drink, shined shoes and were available night and day to wait on the passengers. Since they often worked 20-hour long days and were paid only $67.50 a month, they depended on tips to make enough money to support their families.

Transit riders to assemble to demand a user-based transit system in Austin

 AUSTIN, Texas (August 23, 2010
Buss Riders Union/El Sindicato de Pasajeros Austin Texas

Media contact: For Imiedate release
Mac McKaskle
Macchire@yahoo.com
512-767-5910

Transit riders to assemble to demand a user-based transit system in Austin

 AUSTIN, Texas (August 23, 2010) - The Bus Riders Union-Austin Texas will host a stockholders meeting to develop plans to restructure the antiquated and unproductive bus and rail services that currently constitute Austin's public transit system.  As Austin has become a major urban area, it still retains a transit system based on small-town schedules and old Jim Crow-era routes. On September 18, at University Baptist Church, the Bus Riders Union of Austin will host a general assembly of the stockholders in Austin’s transit system to learn how tax-paying citizen-owners of the system can produce a transit system that gets people from where they are to where they want to be, when they want to be there.
In Austin , the system owners are often the last people who seem to matter in the running of transit, resulting in an inadequate system that results in a defeatist attitude that produces a “we have no choice” mind-set among Austinites needing a modern system that reflects the uniqueness of our city. The first Austin Public Transit Stockholders meeting will address these issues in transit in a five-hour open forum on September 18.  Sessions discussing how the transit system works, how it is affected by governmental policy, the nuisance tax of fares, how to organize power to win, and the system-wide way to improve service routing and scheduling, will be lead by community organizer Mac McKaskle, transit expert Richard Brooks, transit worker Glenn Gaven, and others. These sessions will be followed by a general assembly with speakers scheduled to include community leaders Richard Troxil, Steven Bayers, Stephanie Thomas and Bob Kafka.

UK RMT - Rail fares rip-off and a threat to thousands of safety-critical jobs – transport under attack 100 days in to ConDem government

http://www.rmt.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=138082

Rail fares rip-off and a threat to thousands of safety-critical jobs – transport under attack 100 days in to ConDem government

Publication Date: August 17 2010

As the ConDem Government marks its first 100 days in office this week transport union RMT warned that jobs, quality and safety have been lined up for an all-out assault this autumn with the travelling public expected to take a massive hit on fares to use battered and under-resourced services.

RMT is pointing to:
Rail and tube fares jacked up to the hilt to protect the profits of private companies and to finance the mess left behind following the failed PPP experiment on London Underground.
Rolling stock replacements, upgrades and renewals work all scrapped or delayed leaving passengers to pay through the nose to travel in overcrowded carriages on under-maintained track.
Thousands of transport jobs under threat on rail, the buses, the tube, the ports and at sea compromising safe working standards and condemning key workers to the threat of the dole.

AC Transit Board to appeal court-ordered arbitration supported by ATU 192
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/19/BABB1F050N.DTL
AC Transit to appeal court-ordered arbitration

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, August 19, 2010

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The contract feud between AC Transit and the union representing its drivers and mechanics grew testier and more complex Wednesday night as the transit agency's board voted to appeal a court order mandating an arbitrator settle the dispute.

The AC Transit Board of Directors voted 4-2, with Directors Rocky Fernandez and Elsa Ortiz opposed, to appeal a July 16 court ruling that forced AC Transit into arbitration over a new contract withAmalgamated Transit Union Local 192. It also voted to appeal an Aug. 2 order that prohibited the transit agency from imposing new working conditions. Director Joel Young abstained on the advice of the agency's attorney.

Arbitration hearings are scheduled to begin Friday. Sam Singer, a spokesman for AC Transit during the labor dispute, said the agency will comply with the court order and participate in the arbitration while its appeals are considered.

As Layoffs Hit, NY Transit Workers Push for $5 Worth of Solidarity
http://labornotes.org/blogs/2010/08/layoffs-hit-ny-transit-workers-push-5-worth-solidarity
As Layoffs Hit, NY Transit Workers Push for $5 Worth of Solidarity
by Mischa Gaus | Wed, 08/11/2010 - 4:43pm
Mischa Gaus's blog
The assessment passed by 34 votes on Thursday, August 12.

Sunday would have been Sabrina Greenwood’s five-year employment anniversary in New York’s transit system. But she won’t make it. Along with 193 other station agents, she’ll be laid off Friday.

Her union, Transport Workers Local 100, is trying to soften the blow by funding the laid-off workers’ health care with a special $5-a-week assessment from its 35,000 active members.

It would maintain benefits for six months for roughly 1,000 of the local’s members who have received pink slips so far this year in the transit system’s bloodletting. Members could vote to extend the subsidy for another six months next February. Asking members to reach into their pocket to assist laid-off co-workers is rare in today’s labor movement, especially under these economic conditions.

The assessment would cover the $1,000 to $1,400 per month that Greenwood expects health care for herself and four children will cost.

Runaway train on London Tube's Northern Line-The Cost Of Privatization Drive In Rail
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-10964766
13 August 2010 Last updated at 10:43 ETShare this pageFacebookTwitterShareEmailPrint
Runaway train on London Tube's Northern Line

The train ran for nearly four miles before it stopped at Warren Street
A runaway train went through six stops on a 13-minute journey on London's Tube with other trains having to be cleared out of its path.

The engineering train became uncoupled as it was towed on the Northern Line near Archway station on Friday morning.

Passenger trains were diverted to another branch of the Northern Line while trains were cleared from the Charing Cross branch.

The train ran for nearly four miles before it stopped at Warren Street.

It came to a rest only because there is a slight incline at the station.

Pat Sikorski, assistant general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said he was "horrified" as it could have "very easily resulted in disaster". He said the union understood a collision with a passenger train "was only narrowly avoided".

The train was stopped by a "slight incline" at Warren Street station, London Underground director Richard Parry said.

Union workers keep NY MTA trains running on time
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20100811/OPINION/8110354/Union-workers-keep-MTA-trains-running-on-time
Union workers keep MTA trains running on time
AUGUST 11, 2010

Today the unions find themselves, again, under a blistering attack by the media ("MTA's policies counterproductive," Aug. 7 editorial) and management. This attack seeks to transfer blame for the current economic crisis to organized workers who refuse to be broken or bowed into pretending that they are to blame for this crisis.

This economic disaster should be laid at the feet of the greedy capitalists working on Wall Street, in our banking sector, and their agents in government who signed ill-conceived trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China — among others.

The destruction of our industrial base and our refusal to create a high-wage-and-benefit service sector to replace our high-wage-and-benefit industrial sector, coupled with capitalist greed, has pushed our economy over a cliff without enough parachutes to protect the working class.

Currently, we see numerous questions about overtime within the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The economic crisis at the MTA has nothing to do with overtime or work rules, but much to do with the overall meltdown that was precipitated by Wall Street greed. Furthermore, state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli should master his own job before attacking the MTA.