CHICAGO, IL—“As long as we have each other, we are not alone…When my inside begins to question if this is good or bad, right or wrong, and how the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) and Mayor’s Office will respond, I am made stronger when I envision the City in grid-lock because not one bus or train is moving. If I have that vision, I know the powers that be also share the same vision.” As more than 300 members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 308 voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike vote, this train operator and many other workers understand that the whole damn capitalist system has to go and the working class has the power to make that happen!
Local 308 is the rail side of public transportation, ATU Local 241 is the bus side. This vote followed both locals conducting a joint “Day of Action” on December 21, to protest a CTA contract offer that includes a 2 percent “raise,” an 18 percent increase in health insurance premiums and unlimited subcontracting of transit work. Nearly 10,000 CTA workers have been without a contract for a year.
Transit workers often face long shifts and more than 40-hour weeks. Accelerated discipline, a system that leads to rapid suspensions and firings, is stacked against workers from the word go, and “accelerates” short staffing and increased workloads.
Another worker attacked the CTA’s “evil 2-tier wage system” as part-timers “operate the same trains, flag at the same sights, do the same platform duties, but make half of what a full time employee makes.” He said that four years ago, CTA bosses thanked Locals 308 and 241 for saving them $60 million dollars a year for the life of the contract!
Prison Labor at CTA
There is another group of union members who pay full union dues, pay into the billion-dollar Retiree Health Care Trust, but have no benefits and are temporary. These are the “2nd Chance” workers, who have criminal records for non-violent offenses and make only $10 an hour. This is how this racist, capitalist system works. Give tax cuts to the rich and find more and more ways to drive workers as close to poverty as possible. The whole damn system has to go!
After the strike vote, there was a vote on the 2nd Chance program. Workers who had just called for a strike vote, voted overwhelmingly that the local union should not agree to renew this poverty-wage program with the CTA. Some members complained that 2nd Chance workers get better days off and are used to take away overtime hours. Others said that by only hiring people with criminal records for entry level maintenance jobs, their children cannot get these jobs. What we really need is union scale jobs for everyone now and revolution to get rid of this racist, capitalist system as soon as possible. No one is really getting a second chance at $10/hour. Not surprisingly both the ATU leadership and the CTA bosses want to keep the 2nd Chance Program.
Even after the defeat of Hillary Clinton in November, the union leaders remain in the hip pocket of the Democratic Party. That’s why there has not been a strike since 1979. While some workers have been won to more racist ideas, more are open to the idea of a strike, and to fighting racism. With the rash of police killings of black youth and gang-related murders due to poverty and mass unemployment among black youth, more workers are also talking about the need for revolution. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is rebuilding our national concentration in mass transit. We need to build a mass base for communist revolution among transit workers from Chicago to New York to Washington, DC. We have our work cut out for us, but this is the work that can ultimately lead millions of workers to power. Join us!
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Transit Workers Under Racist Assault
Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the CTA President Dorval R. Carter are pushing for deeper concessions while granting tax cuts and other subsidies to big business. This is the national trend in mass transit, one of the main concentrations of, and last sources of decent pay and benefits, for black workers in the US.
More than 30,000 New York transit workers in Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 are now voting on a contract that offers a 2 percent raise, but will drastically cut labor costs as thousands retire and new hires start at about two-thirds the pay, while billions are paid to the banks on interest for capital project loans. Bus drivers in Dayton, Ohio, ATU Local 1385, voted to strike only to be derailed by the ATU and TWU leadership. In December, ATU local 589 in Boston offered to negotiate wage concessions even before the contract expired. Detroit bus drivers, in ATU Local 26, signed a new contract in 2015 with starting wage of only $12/hour. And in November, the TWU ended a strike by 5,000 Philadelphia transit workers in order to get-out-the-vote for Hillary Clinton, and then accepted a contract that cut pensions.
National freight railroad workers are also in contract talks, facing similar demands from their bosses. Chicago has the highest concentration of freight railroad workers, from nearly all of the major railroads.