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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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?[/quote]

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.[/quote]

All of these would ordinarily be legitimate grounds for concern and objection.  All of these would normally be appropriate for a union to protest.  The problem is WMATA-ATU.  They have become the unitary enemy of the public in this region.  Metro doesn’t have plant problems - it has HR crises.  Metro doesn’t have logistics issues - it has HR issues.  The escalators aren’t broken - the problem is the escalator people and escalator managers.  The ATU, like WMATA management, doesn’t seem to understand that the public has just had it with them, and would be perfectly happy to see the union broken and all managers fired.  A controlled and well-implemented period of WMATA shutdown so as to completely re-staff would be welcomed by most people in the area.  [/quote]

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