Lazy CTA Management Does Not Appreciate The Employees

As seen in the comments of my recent LinkedIn post, some of the CTA managers allege I am selling my coworkers out with “pie in the sky” ideas to get votes in the October ATU Local 308 general elections.

Not shown are also a contingent of my coworkers—who are satisfied with the sickening status quo—that say I am making “too many demands about the wrong things.”

Seriously?

My demanding that the mismanagers should FOLLOW THE CONTRACT is “pie in the sky” and is “too many demands about the wrong things?”

Think about this confounding confluence of crapola for ten seconds…

Now please continue reading.

Below are three examples from a massive portfolio of chronic Collective Bargaining Agreement ("Contract") violations of which the CTA mismanagement blatantly commits without hesitation:

1. Attachment O of the CBA: Assigning Second Chance "Apprentices" to any tasks outside of cleaning trains at the rail stations is actually work for Full-Time Permanent (FTP) Servicers. The immoral mismanagers are ordering vulnerable human beings to work around skin-melting chemicals and deadly 600 VDC third rail, but with none of the benefits and livable wages afforded to FTP Servicers. These workers have no dental benefits, no holiday or nighttime premium, no paid vacation, limited grievance rights, no clothing allowance, no short term disability, no life insurance, no schedule picking rights, etc.
   
   
2. Article 14.1(j) of the CBA: Sending any rail worker to a yard or right-of-way without a radio is common violation. The mismanagers make all kinds of excuses not to assign us radios. We have Full-Time Train Operators that have been working here almost a decade and were never assigned a radio. They must borrow barely-functioning "loaner" radios before their shift. The vehicle maintenance workers who work in the yards are NEVER assigned a radio. They actually communicate with us on our personal cellphones—but then arbitrarily write us up with two-year Safety Violations for violating the no-cellphone rule!
   
   
3. Article 15 (sub-articles 1, 10, 11) of the CBA: The CTA is kicking employees off of group health insurance if on leave due to sickness or injury more than a year—when we are supposed to be covered for the duration of the approved leave. Basically, this discourages employees to fully heal—or not even pursue a leave of absence after a catastrophic incident.

I—and others—have been speaking out about CTA mismanagement through multiple interim elections. Not once have I ran for office. I was once nominated for Delegate and won with zero campaign effort. Since I was a Part-Timer, I have been involved in protests about our terrible working conditions.

If what I do was for a stupid campaign, I would've done it many times by now. In fact, any member that knows me will tell you that I actually refuse to run for any office unless I am nominated by another member.

The lazy mismanagers keep trying to pin me down with weak intellectual juijitsu allegations of vain, corrupt deeds that they do all the time—and I keep reversing those pins to get their fragile egos in an armlock.

Then they whine that I am just a rookie. They even resort to illegal tactics to discourage me—and others—from protesting off the clock on public property!

Here's the real problem (which will exist whether I live, die, get fired or "disappear" from some mob action):

Instead of accepting defeat and eating humble pie with my simple Truths, the mismanagers whine and howl like scared dogs on totally irrelevant—or false—issues.

They would rather ruin lives, exploit vulnerable people, destroy good paying jobs, erase a decent pension and a path out of mutli-generational poverty for thousands of Blacks and Latinos, than to admit they have been on idiot autopilot since 1979.

They are like the sluggard who gets annoyed with the "low battery" chirp on a smoke alarm. Instead of replacing the battery, they remove it!

In fact, that is how they approach almost every problem and hazard at the CTA. Instead of removing the hazard, they hem and haw about why it cannot be done. But they are quick to write up or fire the workers that get caught up in the hazard!

Instead of taking responsibility for their mismanagement, they would rather blame a few militant union members and destroy public transportation in Chicago.

If the CTA management truly appreciates us, then they should treat us like human beings and FOLLOW THE CONTRACT!

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.