Imminent METRO strike? Jackie Jeter, METRO Union president, calling for vote Sunday July 15.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why would it matter where a janitor is mopping up? The metro stations are in hire need of cleaning than bus garages.

Have you gone outside lately from the comfort of air conditioning? It's been hellishly hot outside, which especially affects workers with multi-hour shifts significantly spent under the blazing heat. This issue wouldn't apply to the underground portion of some stations, but many others are entirely above ground, lack adequate air conditioning, and are forced to rely on fans for relief. And that's only on the "partially inside" station area, they bear the full brunt of the heat outside.

I wouldn't be surprised if WMATA is not providing their workers with enough protection from heat stroke. Any cleaning that would be done at the Metro station segments that are outdoors or "partially inside" segments should really only be done at night time, to avoid the worst of the heat. Yet workers are being sent out in the daytime. I would say that's a valid excuse to strike, if an agreement could not be reached to rectify the situation.

What makes me so crazy over threads like these is the assumptions and the superiority. You assume that Metro doesn't consider safety and you know what it takes to maintain a station.

Most of the safety issues brought to the attention of WMATA (and then subsequently ignored on occasion) are brought to them BY employees (union members). Then WMATA finds a way to do the absolute minimum fix, for the least expenditure, on a timetable that doesn't affect fares. Notice I didn't say anything about "public safety" being a factor, because for WMATA, it isn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like they have passed the strike bc they feel disrespected by execs and leadership. Anyone have any insight? It sounds like they are making workers work out of stations more?

It's a whole bunch of issues. The biggest ones, as I understand it, are:

1) WMATA has started requiring that employees provide three days' notice to take sick leave for it to be considered an authorized absence (who knows they're going to be too sick to work three days from now?), more than two unauthorized absences can result in disciplinary action or termination, and managers were converted to "at will" employees who could be terminated immediately for allowing exceptions to this policy. It's basically a way to prevent employees from calling in sick so they don't have to pay other workers overtime to cover for them; and

2) WMATA has implemented a policy barring workers from working seven days straight due to supposed concerns about "worker fatigue." Under the CBA, workers who work a sixth day in a row get time and a half for that sixth day, and if a worker works a seventh day in a row, they get double time. Employees with the most seniority get preference for working a seventh day to get the double overtime pay, so this change in policy was particularly targeting them to bar them from working for overtime double pay (since they are also generally the highest-wage employees). The problem, though, is that WMATA has had no such concern about worker fatigue when it's forced people to work a seventh day , such as for the Inauguration.

The final straw seems to be that they've moved janitors from their jobs in rail yards and bus garages to working in metro stations, potentially in violation of the CBA and without consulting with the union, in order to replace them with lower-cost contractors.

WMATA issues number 1 because workers were abusing the sick leave policy so much.