Electronic Device Blah Blah Blah

The CTA Rules regarding cellphone, smartwatch and earbuds are enforced arbitrarily, without rhyme or reason. I cannot keep count of managers who call coworkers’ personal cell phones while on duty and give them instructions.

It’s common practice for managers to insist that my fellow repairers have a personal cellphone with them in order to get a relief during “sleet fighter duty.” In fact, if you don’t, you may never get a relief after 8 hours.

Sounds like a Class Action Grievance for reimbursed expenses! But wait, it’s against G04-19. Unless there is a new BULL-etin that has an exception for me and my Repairer coworkers? Nah, it can’t be because they have written us up for using cellphones while sitting at our toolboxes after finishing a task.

It is also common for Transportation managers to ring the personal cellphones of Point/Terminal Supervisors to check on intervals, incidents or just to chat.

Watch the managers like I do and you will even spot them on their phones while driving those fancy white SUVs, walking through yards, busy interlockings and in the motorcab.

Is this really about being “unsafe” or is it more about maintaining an arsenal of weapons in our employer’s ongoing war on its union workers?

Maybe you think I am exaggerating.

Think about the Front Line coworkers for a minute: RTO’s for example. Here is a typical hypothetical day:

• Workers on the right-of-way (slow down).
• PIU activation with 10-86 and 10-91 (delays).
• 10-63 and 10-25 blood (delays).
• No CA on duty because who wants to work a 40 hour Part Time job with crappy benefits like unpaid vacation? So the RTO must wait for the ambulance as the victim bleeds all over the platform (delays).
• Maybe a Point Supervisor can help? No, sorry, they are assigned unfilled Extra runs to make up for all the call-off RTO’s that are sick with a virus from trains the RCA management ordered to only have floors mopped. All high touch areas are untouched for weeks.
• Write a Report to Manager about the incident. You’re a Flagman with RTO qualification, so you can barely afford a pen because you had to pay for expensive uniforms out of pocket.
• Workers on the right-of-way (slow down).
• Door #4 on the eighth car won’t open (delays).
• Call it in and walk back to cut and block it.
• Irate passenger calls you a lazy MF.
• Don’t forget the Out of Order Sticker (delays).
• Load and go.
• Controller: Operator please check for a pink iPhone on your sixth car (delays).
• Get gapped at UIC (no chance to catch your breath).
• Your raggedy loaner radio battery is dying.
• The auxiliary cab heater is so noisy on that 50 year old 2600, that you don’t hear the CTA “subway phone” ringing.
• So even if the preschool is calling the Terminal about your sick child, Control cannot contact you.

You get my point?

I battle with the union bosses agents and their loyalists at every membership meeting regarding firings for overworked train operators—human beings who just like that hypothetical one—that are stuck on the road and take an emergency call from a sick child while their train is safely stopped.

The last one I stood up for never even had a lunchbreak on the day they busted her.

No one thought to ask her about that missed lunch. But I did—and that proved again that that G04-19 is just a convenient tool to save money by the CTA.

The CTA has better representation at our membership meetings than our own members! They even have helpers to threaten me with a beat down when I bark back at their union agents. Cops are waiting across the street to remove me if I get too passionate about defending my coworkers.

And you can bet that almost every termination that Local 308 bosses approve, I plead for us to take responsibility for them.

Notice that In this BULL-etin, Boss Bonds even declares that violating G04-19 can result in “accelerated discipline.”

Basically, that means they can outright fire us if caught with a personal cell phone. They can skip all those steps!

They are pure evil.

The CTA mismanagement is so cheap. Instead assigning every rail maintenance and transportation worker a two-way radio and CTA cellphone, they get away with cultivating a lax work environment that fosters violations of their own rules. 

Moreover, by not even assigning us radios when we go into the rail yards, they are in violation of Article 14.1(j): 

WORKING RADIOS: No employee shall be assigned to work on the right-of-way or in a rail yard unless the CTA has provided the employee with a working radio.

That's right! None of us are supposed be assigned work in the yards without a radio. That includes Servicers!

Regardless of the BULL in G04-19–as your very annoying, inconvenient and uncontrollable Local 308 union steward—it is my duty to help you understand the seriousness of General Bulletin G04-19.

For Customer Assistants who are written up, this will be a Behavioral Violation. There is one minor exception that CTA mismangers and my detractors in the union office will not tell you (keep reading).

These violations stay on your record for 365 days (1 year) for each hit. Then it resets.

• 1st Offense: Final Written Warning and 1 Day Suspension.
• 2nd Offense: Corrective Case Interview (CCI) and Probation with 3 Day Suspension.
• 3rd Offense: Referral to General Manager and Discharge (Fired).

For everyone else except Customer Assistants, violation of G04-19 will earn you a lovely 2 year Safety Violation (730 days). Then it resets.

• 1st Offense: Written Warning.
• 2nd Offense: Final Written Warning and 1 Day Suspension.
• 3rd Offense: Corrective Case Interview (CCI) with Probation and 3 Day Suspension.
• 4th Offense: Referral to General Manager with a Recommendation for Discharge (Fired).

See the Corrective Action Guidelines for more information about the sins and punishment that awaits us as workers at the CTA.

Managers and coworkers may tell you all kinds of exceptions to G04-19. So I want to bust up all myths and misconceptions regarding G04-19 now:

1. This covers RAIL maintenance and transportation workers. You may see a bus operator standing outside their bus on a phone at a terminal or bus turnaround (BTA). As long as they are not in the operator seat, they are an exception. No such thing exists for us in rail.
   
   
2. This covers every single vehicle or facility. Despite what some silly Coordinator tells you, Rail Car Appearance Servicers cannot be on phones while sitting in a train while on duty. Any RTO’s caught on personal cell phones waiting for their train at the platform can be written up. I have first-hand knowledge of a Servicer who got a Safety Violation for looking at his phone while warming up in a platform booth.
   
   
3. It includes smart watches and earbuds. Those white things you stick in your ears are basically alarms inviting Safety Violations. I know of many train operators who were written up and/or fired while wearing them during video surveillance for some trifling violation.
   
   
4. It includes phones in your pocket that might fall out if a grumpy manager hungry for writeups is watching you. We have one demonic manager who will walk up to coworkers to ask the time. When the RTO looks at their watch, he will write them up for wearing a smartwatch.
   
   
5. You cannot make videos or posts on TikTok, Facebook or whatever, even if you are a Towerman, Switchman, Clerk or Instructor in an office, classroom or relay house while on duty. If you are on duty, just wait until you are off.
   

The irony of G04-19 is that part of it actually violates our Collective Bargaining Agreement! Specifically, for Customer Assistants and—more specifically—the ban on radio is unlawful.

Take a look at Article 14.1(c): 

“COMFORTABLE SANITARY CONDITIONS…Ticket agents shall not be prohibited from playing portable battery operated radios without ear plugs during off-peak hours so long as it does not interfere with the performance of the employee’s duties as determined by the Authority.”

According to the June 3, 1997 Customer Assistant Agreement (Attachment E, paragraph 2(e)), “Ticket Agents will be transitioned to Customer Assistant…”

Essentially, as long as it is battery-powered, not used during rush hour and does not have ear plugs, a Customer Assistant (CSA/CSR) can have a radio that plays conventional radio broadcasts. That is AM, FM or shortwave.

Now that is a Class Action Grievance I would like to see happen.

I am not advising CA’s to start using such devices. However, I am certainly supporting its validity in light of G04-19.

I hope you found this exposition on the dreaded “Electronic Device” rule. Please offer comments, criticism and share it with coworkers. 

Below is a website version of the two-page G04-19 BULL-etin

CTA Rule Against Electronic... by Chicago Transit Justice Coa...