Four Hour Overtime Arbitration Award (Operations)

The arbitration award below was presented to us at the October 2022 Local 308 membership meeting by Vice President Mark Weems. It "makes whole" transportation/operations employees for overtime from May 18, 2014 through August 23, 2017. Those who retired since then will receive payment too. The badge numbers for each employee are in the document.

On February 16, 2023, Second Vice President Pennie McCoach announced the following reward information on multiple Local 308 Facebook Groups:

“Officers are happy to announce that after a long and hard day fought arbitration, the monies for the Blue line “4 hour rule” will be paid on Feb 24th, 2023. A total of 312 Local 308 members will receive payments, the total amount paid to union brother’s and sister’s is $417,896.18. If you have direct deposit it will be sent directly to your bank account if you receive a paper check please call the union office on Monday Feb 27th. Thank you for your patience and support.”

For those of us in Vehicle Maintenance, this award is not related to our class-action grievance regarding a similar slick move by the CTA overlords last year: https://ericbasir308.blogspot.com/2022/06/shop-worker-overtime-class-action.html

That one is still with the arbitrator.

I also wanted to address the misgivings some members are having about this award. All of your objections are sincere and appropriate. If the elected leaders want to rebut your objections with things like "y'all ain't never satisfied," they are showing their inability to understand the Hidden Truth. 

That is, at the root of our objections lies the real problem: Business Unionism.

We are a union that functions as a top-down, undemocratic, transactional service. That is, we pay others in an office to fight for us and tell us what to do—and if we don't like it, we suffer for three years, vote for another benevolent dictator and hope for the best.

Revolutionary Unionism—the antithesis of Business Unionism—does not not exist at ATU Chicago. One of its products, Direct Action, is the number one weapon against greedy employers like the CTA.

Direct Action is when the membership formulates, debates and acts on immediate remedies. These are done in place of—or in preference to—grievance/arbitration. Direct Action gives the membership a stake in the wins and losses. Either way, we ALL have to take it or try again and again until we get it right.

Check out this example of Direct Action regarding layoffs from The Union Member's Complete Guide 2nd Edition by Michael Mauer:

In fact, this kind of thing is discouraged at ATU Chicago—and those who choose to promote it are excoriated by the elected leadership as divisive. However, I want to you to think about how things might be different if we relied on direct action—as opposed to some Almighty Arbitrator. 

If the membership did respond to offenses like the 12 versus 16 hour overtime with Direct Action, would the CTA overlords think twice about trying the same crap with the Vehicle Maintenance department?

As a union steward, I am constantly trying to use coworker's complaints and grievances for a springboard to direct action. I hope you will start doing the same.

Local 308 Arbitration Award... by Chicago Transit Justice Coa...