MTA & Union bosses railroad workers with pathetic contract

NEW YORK CITY, July 3—It's sellout contract season at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) New York City Transit Authority section (NYCTA). The boss-loving TWU Local 100 misleadership hurt the workers who keep the city's trains and buses running.

As with just about any "contract" under capitalism, this one is a racist slap in the face to NYCTA's mainly Black and Latin workers. It provides pathetic, below inflation wage increases, does nothing to improve the challenging time off process for some departments, forces employees to work even more hours, and joins up with the bosses' for profit Medicare Advantage scheme. With imperialist war with China and Russia impending overseas, the MTA must satisfy its Wall Street debt owners off the backs of both its ridership and workers.  Local 100 is all too happy to oblige them in that goal with this pathetic offering.

NYC subway workers, 170 plus of whom died from Covid-19 moving essential workers while the racist MTA bosses disallowed us Personal Protective Equipment due to fears of "public perception," must realize that there will never be a "fair” or just contract under a system that places profit over the working class. The only way for transit workers to get what they and all workers deserve is to join together to smash capitalism and fight for a communist revolution, on and off the rails!

Paying off debt on workers’ backs
Local 100 “leaders'' are performing their class role, working hand in hand with the MTA bosses, to repay the system’s $48 billion in debt to Wall Street bankers. Decades of neglect by the city’s bosses left the subway system in a decrepit state in the 1980s (Gothamist, 6/21). During this period, MTA leadership for the first time approached profiteering banks, all too eager to lend financial handouts. This ballooning debt has continually been used to finance new station expansions, train cars, buses and track, to be repaid through increased tolls, taxes and fares. Or in other words, by the working class!

Today, the amount the MTA will pay on this debt will represent 40 percent of its entire toll and fare revenue, a number that was less than four percent in 1984.

This means the bosses' banks have written blank checks to maintain the trains and buses in a barely good state of repair. And workers are perennially forced to endure the racist service cuts that come with this crushing debt. Those cuts are set to become even worse after ridership tanked during the pandemic, as the MTA admitted to its lenders in April (Gothamist, 6/21).

Now, with another racist fare hike on the horizon (New York Times, 5/22), which would bring in more money to finance bosses’ pockets and barely the system itself, Local 100 cannot avoid the contradiction inherent in every union today: it must partner in tandem with management to produce an agreement that harms both MTA workers and the ridership!

Forcing workers to toil more
The tentative agreement expands on an employee availability clause, introduced in a previous contract, to force employees to work an additional five days. Once this goal is reached, “the parties will implement gainsharing of any additional improvement,” according to the language. This means that the union will share these profits with the MTA bosses.

Employees who work in the Rapid Transit Operations (RTO) division, that includes train operators and conductors, already have to compete against their coworkers using an automated phone system 20 days in advance, just to receive a day off. Many times, these day-off requests are denied.

Many in RTO use their sick days–which are always granted immediately–as a workaround.  Management is directly responsible for many MTA workers being out, imposing harsh disciplinary suspensions and medically restricting them and making them go through hoops to return. Many workers were also out sick during the pandemic’s worst days (Spectrum News, 3/24/20).

But of course, this clause makes no mention of those factors. And as long as the trains run, why would the bosses care about the well being of those operating them? A common demand that we have repeatedly expressed to the union in years past was for more “mental” health days. Many of our trips lack sufficient recovery time and the environment we work in can be mentally challenging at times. With the agreement,  Local 100 not only is attacking the workers it represents, but the working class as a whole, as they will deal with a more tired operating workforce.

Contract privatizes Medicare for healthcare bosses’ pockets
The union is also joining city efforts to strip workers of government Medicare for the racist Medicare Advantage (MA) plan (see CHALLENGE, 6/10/21). The agreement,  if ratified, would eliminate the traditional option and force MTA retirees to choose one of two MA plans. In response to a backlash, union bosses have released statements claiming that the two plans will not result in diminished service and will be better than regular Medicare. But we know that Medicare Advantage places control in the hands of for profit private insurance companies that are known to deny care in several instances (New York Times, 4/28). The switch would also save the MTA money, as the government subsidizes Advantage plans more than the traditional one.

Flyers promoting the contract have said that it has no givebacks, but this effort to sell out mostly Black and Latin retirees (which was included in the document of the MTA’s proposals given to the TWU in May) clearly proves they’re lying to the membership!

Fighting back
Even with the strong likelihood that most departments will ratify the contract, as has been the case historically, many of our coworkers have denounced it on online Facebook groups and in our crew rooms. This is an opportunity to use that working class anger towards something even better than a better contract. Progressive Labor Party members in transit have been active in discussing the contract with coworkers, pushing them to vote no in higher numbers than usual, especially in the RTO department. These conversations also allow us to bring up the Party as the only way to win in the end.

The MTA workers who transport four of the city’s eight million residents daily are in a unique position to strike a blow against the bosses who generate billions in profit from our labor and tell us we need to give back more concessions, when we gave the ultimate concession during the pandemic’s darkest days: our lives!

But the union leadership will always strangle that  that potential, which is why we must fight for a workers’ world.