Protocols of Suffering CTA Workers

UPDATE (11/10/2024): The CTA Lie Department responded to the ILRB and I regarding my charges (see redacted charges below and scroll down past the weather report). The most disgusting part of their response is that the CTA Lie Department exposes our own union president as taking a direct call from the manager and taking their side to say I was not on union business and could not be there because I work in the maintenance department! I have documented proof I was on union business and am allowed to speak up for maintenance workers no matter where they are working! This outrageous selling out of a union official to management by a president is messed up on so many levels. Maintenence workers frequently use the Operations break room to use the toilet and purchase snacks from the vending machine. We go in there to vote too! If she is doing this to me, she is doing it to others. What a rotten president. Just like all the other ones before her. I swear if I become president, I will never betray officers or members. Even she will be treated the way I wish to be treated. 

UPDATE (8/27/2024): President Pennie emailed me: Good afternoon, Bro. Basir the air situation at Howard yesterday was due to the city issues I  spoke with the director of Rail operation they begin working on it this morning also the ready room behind the supervisor booth air is being attended to as well I’ve made the Rail North Executive board member Bro Thomas aware of it as well. A fellow union official contacted me shortly thereafter and said "I don't know what you did, but Manager X was out there at 9 in the morning getting the A/C fixed."

While on union payroll, I visited Howard Shop today. President Pennie asked to do it. The first Shop Workers I meet are always at the Terminal Platform. 

They were glad that a Coordinator whose name stars with an M provided ice and water. But the shanty/ready-room had broken air conditioning. So they and the train operators had no cool place to rest that protected them from the public. They were worried about getting sick and I was worried about them too.

This was a deadly working condition of 95 degrees F and I took initiative to make personal one-on-one contact with managers. I was polite until they became belligerent and threatening. Then I had to use my "equality rights" as a union rep and turn up the volume! They didn't like it and were taken aback by meeting such a scrappy union rep (most just curl up and roll away like ants sprayed with insecticide).

I did lots of investigations and questions to find out who to talk to, but it ended up being a total attack against our union as the lazy bastards resorted to threatening me with punishment for the clothes I wear. Yes, I was a Customer Assistant, Flagman and Motorman. So I wear the uniforms and obscure the CTA logo patch. I do this because I don't want workers to confuse me with managers or managers-in-training (union officials who like to dress like managers). 

But that shouldn't matter. What I wear—and how I look—has nothing to do with anything (especially while off the clock)!

I made my Workplace Complaint to the union president. She was too busy lecturing me about offending her manager friends and probably won't even read it. So I immediately filed an Unfair Labor Practice Charge with the Illinois Labor Relations Board. 

Redacted ULP charges and video updates are below: