TA Takes Employees On Hell Ride

September 2000 Update on this story; This Foreman has just been promoted to Superintendent. Now in charge of the very people who's safety he violated, and the very people who filed a grievance against him. Shame on the governor who allows the state agencies to do this. God help the poor bastards that fall under his auspices. Next stop may be the city morgue.

"Don't worry guys the TA won’t contest your claims for workers compensation. You are all wearing your safety vests, helmets and safety shoes. They never said that we had to put safety belts in our vehicles"
(actually, they don't treat the passengers much differently)

During the recent Con Edison power outage effecting the “Washington Heights-Inwood “ area of upper Manhattan in New York City the TA was once again forced to call on the assistance of the only thing that never fails to perform, “The Transit Authority Signal Worker”.

On 7/7/99 at approximately 1:00 PM, a group of Signal Maintainers were selected from the personnel of the 215th Street Signal Shop to be transported to an area near 157th Street on Broadway. They were escorted to a van and told to sit on the floor. They were then driven down Broadway to their destination, approximately three and a half- (3.5) miles. Traffic conditions, because of the fact that the traffic lights were inoperable due to the power outage, were to say the least, extremely dangerous. They passed through approximately 60 ungoverned traffic intersections.

In addition to violating the existing traffic safety laws of the city and state, the irresponsible, unconscionable actions of the transit authority subjected their employees to unwarranted, uncomfortable, life threatening conditions as seven workers were being bounced around on the floor of a van without benefit of safety belts or other restraints to protect them in the event of a collision.

The workers involved were hesitant to bring recriminations against the foreman directly in charge of the group, one might say they have come to expect management’s blatant disregard for their safety. They were however concerned over the strong possibility of a recurrence of such behavior. With this in mind, they decided to bring the subject up at morning safety meeting. When they expressed their concerns over the safety violation they were subjected to, The foreman replied, “the next time we will hire a limo, we might even serve champagne”.

Was this an outrageous statement to make? This would be difficult to say. Normally, any responsible supervisor, regardless of his own personal feelings, would never be so careless as to publicly announce the fact that he held his subordinates in such low esteem as to have complete disregard for their safety. Given the fact however, that the statement falls well within the parameters of our opinions of management's lack of respect for our well being, no one could say the expression of those opinions came as a complete surprise.

Undaunted, one of the passengers of “The hell ride” decided to file a grievance. He outlined the conditions to which he and his co-workers were subjected. Indeed, the most startling concept of the grievance procedure in this particular incident, is the very fact that such an obvious wrong committed against this worker should require a formal grievance procedure to be corrected. In spite of the outrage committed against him, the worker seeks no revenge as a remedy. He simply asks, that management take steps to see that there is no reoccurrence of the violation..One would think that management would have jumped at the chance to get off the hook, while at the same time taking advantage of the learning experience. Would you believe it, these morons actually want to fight it.

The problem here is two fold; In expressing, at the morning safety meeting, his total lack of concern, much less remorse for his actions, this otherwise very intelligent Signal Foreman felt completely justified in subjecting his subordinates to the actions he was responsible for on the previous day. Obviously, he believes that he is carrying out the desires of the upper management (the word management, as it relates to the TA, is used to describe the people who get paid more money than the workers, the title should not be confused with similar titles in other industries where the title is applied to persons with demonstrated talents for leadership and decision making).

Secondly, this type of action continues to reinforce the concept of the authority's unquestioned rights, to deprive the workers of theirs. The behavior feeds off previous cases of abuse such as the Ariff Roberts case where the foremen were, according to the arbitrators report, “constrained” (forced) to change their reports (lie about the evidence) in an accident investigation. The manager responsible for that felonious action was subsequently promoted. I am still begging every law enforcement official I can think of to send the offenders to jail on this one.

Given the examples as set forth herein, first line supervisors are beginning to see worker harassment, lying and safety rule violations as a viable “next step on the promotional opportunities ladder”, is it any wonder then that they treat their workers with disdain. The big problem however, and the immediate one for the workers, is what are we going to do about it. One of our workers has already told them in no uncertain terms, “you screw around with my safety, I’ll fight you”, his grievance bears this out. Win, lose or draw they will think twice before they subject him to this type of indignity again.

Perhaps you may recall that in one of our previous contracts, one of the items that was highlighted as a big win “management will treat the workers with dignity”. The remark that accompanied this “big concession” was that we were the first union ever to get that put in our contract. I can’t help but wonder; were we the first one that needed it?

You may recall how many of our superintendents have retired during the recent changes in upper management. They all know that the present administration under which the signal department now finds itself is an invitation to disaster. Many of them have opted out because they don’t want to be a part of a Gestapo like regime that treats workers like second class citizens. The rest of them have left because they don’t believe that they should be called up at home because the present leadership needs expert advice on how to change out a dark signal.

The simple fact remains that as each day goes by we lose another right. With each right we lose, we lose another experienced worker who will no longer put up with it. They wonder why they have to have open competitive tests for the Signal Maintainer job. Simple enough;

nobody wants it