Crocodile Tears and The Great Mismanagement

I just about flipped my lid when reading this article from WTTW Channel 11 about the upcoming potential CTA budget shortfall.

Please take a moment to read the article or listen to the video below before continuing.

What a fantastic buffet of bubbling bullshxt coming from the CTA mismanagement! They blame everyone but themselves! The workers. The Covid. The crime. The economy. What's next? The Klingons?

The CTA mismanagement was cutting jobs, speeding up work and abusing workers—with the blessing of their agents of business in the union office—for years before the Pandemic! 

Part-Time Bus Operator, One-Person Train Operation, Customer Service Assistant Agreement, Second Chance Agreement and Full-Time Temporary Flagman Agreement was the total breach of a dam that accelerated the destructive tsunami of what was once the finest public sector company to work for in the United States.

Just this past year, the firings of workers regarding the vaccine mandate was in full throttle! 

This December, the CTA laid off experienced Second Chance workers! Instead of giving them those Full-Time Jobs that sellout union Boss Keith Hill boasts about, they gave them exit interviews! In the past 30 days two of my coworkers in 40+ hour Part Time jobs died while at work because they are so poor and afraid to be punished if they called off sick!

Me and others in the Chicago Transit Justice Coalition protested about this hypocrisy and the CTA and City of Chicago surrounded us with dozens of cops and a paddywagon! What crimes were we committing?

Moreover, nobody wants to work where they are terrorized! It has gotten so bad that a manager threatened one of my coworkers with MURDER! The apologists for the CTA mismanagement cry out that this person was a "Coordinator" and not a manager. It's the same damn thing. Both can write us up and assign work. They are just embarrassed that upper management fosters a culture of low-intensity violence and fear.

Then, when I, an ATU Local 308 Union Steward and Delegate, was to represent another one of the coworkers who was threatened by the same manager, my union president made a deal with a CTA upper management to illegally block the coworker from using my assistance.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of employee harassment!

Cutting Full-Time jobs, speeding up work, increasing Part-Time jobs, harassing employees is real reason why the CTA—and many other organizations—cannot maintain staffing ratios. 

Moreover, the complaint that so many managers—and ignorant workers proclaim—that we are lazy, has been totally debunked by the Economic Policy Institute. We are working harder than people did in the 1940's—and getting paid much, much less. 

The Productivity Growth and Hourly Compensation chart at left is as clear as day: We are working hard—and we cannot work any harder. The CTA is no exception to the rule. 

Absenteeism—due to sickness and injuries—feeds the problem of staffing shortages. We want to work. But we are burned out and dying from overtime and crappy working conditions that are fostered by budget cuts! 

Our government is about to dump another $50 billion USD into the War Machine. This is on top of the one six months ago. The CTA—and all other public sector agencies—are bemoaning budget shortfalls while we let the politicians send our money into machines of death and destruction. That money needs to go to our schools, infrastructure, health care, housing and public transportation!

Our cities and towns are rotting. The people are sick and dying. Our pensions are evaporating. No, this is not in The Great Resignation. We are in The Great Mismanagement. 

The only way out is for the ordinary people to organize, rise up and do the extraordinary things which take power from the powerful and put it in the hands of the people. History is our guide if we open our eyes and study.