CHICAGO, IL February 21 — Close to 1,000 transit workers have been fired by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) over the last two years, the vast majority being black workers. Most were members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 241, on the bus side. Tim Stovall was a member of ATU Local 308, on the train side. In 2010, Tim was falsely arrested for selling marijuana while on the job. The racist police lied and said he had a prior conviction and that he had pled guilty to a felony in the past. Tim filed a grievance and provided documentation to prove that the police were lying. The Grievance Committee voted to take his case to arbitration.
Then Local 308 President Robert Kelly (salary $134,000/year), who was fired for stealing about 20 years ago, convinced the Grievance Committee to change its vote and deny Tim an opportunity to fight for his job. At the membership meeting, Kelly only read the racist police report, and based on that, the membership voted not to arbitrate. The best Robert Kelly could do was to offer Tim a $9/hr. job (barely a third of the regular pay rate) in the 2nd Chance Program for ex-felons, even though Tim was never convicted of a crime (and the program has since been disbanded). Our union leaders belong in jail!
What happened to Tim Stovall is not an isolated incident. We have been under attack from the CTA bosses and their junior partners in the ATU leadership for over a decade. Workers are being fired for one safety violation and accelerated discipline allows the company to treat a minor incident as if it were one in a string of major accidents. These attacks mirror the racist budget slashing of the Cook County Healthcare System and public education. The bankers and real estate developers are making billions while millions are out of work and millions more are under-employed working for poverty wages.
The “war on drugs” has always been a lie, a war on workers and youth that has filled the prisons, disenfranchised millions and forced black and Latino youth into dead-end poverty-wage jobs. We will continue fight to get Tim Stovall’s job back. And while we do, we will build the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party in the bus garages and train yards. A measure of our success will be to have CTA workers march on May Day with PLP!