May 15^th 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

As you know ATU Local 726, along with ATU Local 1056, has been in Contract Arbitration with the MTA since December 2011. We have always believed that our attorneys presented an iron-clad case proving that the MTA had the ability to grant both ATU Locals the same contract that had previously been granted to TWU Local 100.  As you know the MTA was adamant throughout the Arbitration process that they did not have the ability to grant us TWU Local 100’s entire contract and that ATU’s had to accept a lower rate of pay, part time Bus Operators, higher health care premiums, overtime after a 40 hour work week along with many other conditions.

The briefs were handed in on March 28^th and we have been awaiting the decision since then.

Today May 15^th we received Arbitrator George Nikolai’s decision in our Arbitration case.

Arbitrator Nikolai has granted both ATU Locals the entire TWU Local 100 contract. The MTA was not granted one of their demands.

We have received the full 11% raise, all retro, the 1.5% on 40 hours with full retro on prior payments. The full decision will follow.

The Arbitrator has allowed the MTA 60 days to implement the contract. We will let everyone know as soon as we do when the retro will be paid.

We will like to thank every member for standing by the Executive Board during this long hard fight.

 Sincerely,

Daniel Cassella

President/Business Agent

Next stop: DANGER!

Rowdy kids are disabling city buses by flipping an unlocked "kill switch" - a terrifying trend that drivers told The Post is accelerating. "It's a growing problem. It happens every day," said Frank Austin, Bronx Division chairman of Transport Workers Union Local 100.

One rider told The Post her S46 bus was stopped three times on one trip by vandals on Castleton Avenue on Staten Island. "It was a scary thing to know that kids could shut it off," she recalled of the March incident. She said about six teens descended on the slow-moving vehicle, flipped the switch and forced it to a dead halt. The driver went outside to restart it. The wolf pack then flipped the switch twice more before the bus could get rolling again, forcing the driver outside each time to restart it. By then, the rider said, she was too scared to remain on board, so she got off the bus.

"Why does the switch have to be ..... where the public can interfere?" she said. "Suppose there?s a bad situation? What do you do then?"

The Post is not publishing photos of the kill switch or revealing its location or labeling in the interest of public safety.

Last summer, driver Tomar Lang's Bx15 was stopped at a red light at 168th Street in The Bronx when five teens riding skateboards and bicycles approached. They waited for the bus to move before they triggered the cutoff. "It made people lunge forward and backwards, and the bus came to a complete stop. I was frightened. I didn't know a bus could just shut off like that," Lang said.

About 2,027 of the MTA's natural-gas and electric/diesel hybrid buses are equipped with the switch, designed to kill engine and battery power in the event of a fire. A total of 892 have been retroactively fitted with locks, at about $200 a pop. The rest remain at risk, drivers said.

"We became aware that buses had become vulnerable to this activity several years ago, and we've been trying since then to remedy it, starting first in the area where most prevalent," MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said. All new buses entering the fleet will have locked switches.

A veteran bus driver thinks the MTA made the switch's location too obvious.

"The MTA is backwards. No one is supposed to know about the switch - but if you print instructions .... who are you hiding it from?" the driver said.

"It?s a simple thing that can be taken care of," said a 29-year bus driver in Downtown Brooklyn who has been victimized. "But you?re talking about the MTA. They don'?t do anything unless they have to."

Chicago transit officials have grappled with similar problems. In January, four teens were arrested after disabling the power on a bus and then beating and robbing passengers. The city now locks its switches.

(NY Post - 2/7/12 - JENNIFER FERMINO, Transit Reporter)

A little-known US House transportation bill stripping the MTA of much-needed revenue could lead to a fare hike for city straphangers, the agency's chief warned yesterday.

MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota - in an unusual foray into national politics - blasted the Republican-backed bill that would strip roughly $1 billion in guaranteed annual funding from the agency.

"It's the worst piece of legislation anyone could ever imagine," he fumed at a press conference in Grand Central Terminal.

In addition to possibly leading to a fare hike, the bill also jeopardizes MTA mega-projects like the Second Avenue Subway by eliminating the guaranteed tax-revenue sources for those big-ticket plans.

"This bill would hit the MTA hard," said Lhota. It could also hit riders in the wallet.

"Over time . . . if we don't get the monies necessary to do the repair and renovations of the system, it will raise fares," said Lhota.

Dubbed the American Energy and Infrastructure Act, the bill calls for a drastic rewriting of the funding formula under which the MTA receives federal dollars.

That formula, first introduced in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, guarantees the MTA and other mass-transit agencies a cut of all revenues from gas taxes.

If the bill passes, none of the mass-transit agencies - the largest of which is the MTA - would get money from those taxes.

Instead, agencies would have to petition the feds annually for funding - a risky proposition that would force the MTA to compete against everything from homeland security to education for funding.

"The proposal would substitute a reliable funding source with an undetermined and wholly unreliable commitment," said Lhota. "It would rob the MTA of investments we count on every year to fund our vital capital program."

The bill has already passed the House's Transportation and Ways and Means committees. It is expected to go to the floor for a vote next week.

Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat who represents Queens and The Bronx, said a House Republican told him they needed to take the money away from mass transit to fund infrastructure programs all over the country.

"We all recognize that we have an infrastructure problem, but you don't rob from Peter to pay for Paul," said Crowley.

NY Daily News - 2/7/12 - no byline)

Drastic cut in mass transit funds would be a disaster for the city

House Republicans have aimed a dagger at New York's central nervous system: mass transportation. The city's congressional delegation - notably Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand - must rally to prevent disaster.

Legislation pushed by the GOP leadership would deny the Metropolitan Transportation Authority a steady, reliable source of funding for repair and construction, forcing the agency to beg for money out of fluctuating appropriations.

That's how things were before 1983, when Republican hero President Ronald Reagan signed into law a measure that guaranteed mass transit nationally a slice of gasoline tax collections. Doing so, Reagan enabled the MTA to end the days of undependable rolling stock, deteriorating stations and dicey rails and tunnels.

Under the Surface Transportation Assistance Act, mass transit shares the tax - now 18.6 cents a gallon - with highways on a 20%-80% basis. In 2010, the levy raised about $35 billion, of which about $1 billion came to New York.

The House Surface Transportation Act, expected to come to the floor for a vote next week, would devote the tax entirely to road building.

The Senate version of the bill retains the mass transit allocation. Schumer and Gillibrand say they are determined to preserve the provision. They must succeed in beating back the House GOP's shortsighted destructiveness.

The MTA has used money from the gasoline tax to establish five-year capital plans to prevent the return of crippling deterioration.

In 1982, before the Reagan law was passed, subway trains broke down every 7,145 miles, on average. Weekday ridership was 3.4 million.

Today, trains travel an average of 170,000 miles between breakdowns, thanks to funding that helps to maintain and replace the rolling stock. Ridership is 2.1 million higher.

Only public safety is more vital to the city and region than mass transportation. The subway alone moves 5.5 million people each weekday between their homes, workplaces and schools, out of an MTA total of 8.5 million.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has called the GOP legislation "the worst transportation bill I've ever seen during 35 years of public service." That's a hell of a condemnation. This monstrosity must die.

The MTA and a group of Democratic leaders warned that a federal transportation bill would strip the agency of an important revenue stream and lead to skyrocketing fares.

"Mass transit shouldn't be a stepchild," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) said Sunday of the GOP-backed legislation.

Congress is expected to vote on the Surface Transportation Authorization bill in the next two weeks.

Nadler said, if passed, it would end the guaranteed funding that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other mass transit systems currently receive from the gasoline tax.

Federal gas tax funds have been used for both public highways and transit since 1983.

Under the bill, the tax is expected to generate $25 billion over five years, but mass transit would not get a piece of the money.

It's unclear how much the MTA would lose, but Nadler said the bill would make longer-term projects impossible to fund.

Instead, he said, the MTA would have to rely on the highly political appropriations process.

"They're saying that mass transit isn't as important as highways," he said.

"We have 8.5 million people per day coming into the city on mass transit."

Nadler said fares would likely increase under the bill.

"All these systems have to pay for the capital budget," he said. "You gotta maintain the system. If you don't have enough money, you gotta raise fares."

MTA Chief Joe Lhota also wrote to Congress warning that lost funding would "result in degraded service."

A key House Committee is threatening to kill three decades of successful investments in mass transit - originally started under President Ronald Reagan - by ending the guarantee for dedicated funding for public transportation, leaving millions of riders already faced with service cuts and fare increases out in the cold.

In a stunning development late last night, House leadership and the Ways and Means committee made a shocking attack on transit that would have huge impacts for the millions of people who depend on public transportation each day.

They proposed putting every public transportation system in immediate peril by eliminating guaranteed funding for the Mass Transit Account and forcing transit to go begging before Congress for general funds each year - all while highway spending continues to be guaranteed with protected funds for half a decade at a time.

Get involved. Can you take just a moment and tell your representative that this short-sighted idea is intolerable for their voters?

This incredible move would roll back 30+ years of bipartisan federal transportation policy and reverse a decision made by President Reagan in the 1980's to fund our nation's transit system out of a small share of gas tax revenues. This change would mean no more guarantee of funding each year and no long-term stability for public transportation. States, cities, communities and their transit systems could lose billions.

We released a statement earlier today decrying this unprecedented attack on transit: "We are deeply concerned that if this measure passes, Americans who use public transportation, or who would like that option in the future, will be thrown under the bus," said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. "This couldn't come at a worse time for people who need an affordable, reliable way to get to work, or for employers who need workers." Corless noted the demand for transit has been rising as the economy slowly recovers and people are using public transportation to get to jobs and to avoid volatile gas prices. Over the course of the five-year transportation program, America's population will continue to age rapidly, and a growing number of seniors will be looking to transit services maintain their independence.

It's not just us, though. Even the association of state DOT heads submitted a letter to the committee urging them to reconsider their ill-advised plan.

The Mass Transit Account has been in existence since 1982 and AASHTO has continuously supported this account as a critical component of the Highway Trust Fund. AASHTO has long supported the principle that 20 percent of the gas tax revenues that have been put in place since 1982 be allocated to a dedicated mass transit account. We believe that the two complementary accounts need to be maintained in order to support a well-funded, multimodal transportation system.

We respectfully request that the current Highway Trust Fund structure with its two accounts and respective revenue allocations be retained.

Transit is unquestionably a critical component of our nation's transportation system, and one that millions of people (or voters, if you're reading, committee members) depend on each day to get around. More people on transit means less congestion, less pollution, and fewer cars on the road.

Tell your representative that this unprecedented attack on transit won't stand.

Negotiators for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its largest employee union will meet Thursday to resume talks on a new contract, two weeks after union officials shut off negotiations over leaks to the press.

The meeting will be the first face-to-face negotiations with MTA since John Samuelsen, the president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, stormed out of a meeting with management and publicly denounced MTA officials for "bargaining in bad faith."

At issue was this Jan. 19 story from the Daily News, which laid out the terms that MTA officials would be seeking from the union at that day's negotiating session. The MTA was willing to offer 1% annual raises, but only if workers accepted work rule changes worth $150 million.

Samuelsen was apoplectic.

"You had bus operators, track workers, signal maintainers reading the newspaper today with a better grasp of what the MTA was going to do with the negotiation than the negotiating committee of the union and the leadership of the union," he said at a press conference after leaving the meeting. "That is an outrage and that is bargaining in bad faith by definition."

Since then, the sides have played nicer and have avoided negotiating in the press.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters last week, MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota refused to comment on the status of talks with TWU, whose contract for its 34,000 workers expired Jan. 15. The chairman did note, however, that he and Samuelsen have called each other frequently.

"I speak to John almost every day," Lhota said.

(NY Daily News - 1/31/12)

It has been a long time since anyone - except his mother - called Transport Workers Union President John Samuelsen cute, but he deserves the description today.

Not cheek-squeezing cute, but game-playing cute.

Amid contentious labor negotiations, Samuelsen called on subway drivers to enter stations "with extra care," raising the possibility of slower trains and longer trips for riders. The union said it was handing out flyers only because three people had been killed on the tracks over a single weekend this month.

Samuelsen crafted the leaflets to emphasize safety first, last and always, so he will get no arguments on that score from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or anyone else. That said, he none too subtly reminded the city of his members' ability to make life miserable if talks grind to a halt.

To this point, Samuelsen has proceeded with muscular prudence. While his members are steeped in the ethos of no-contract-no-work, hard realities stare him in the face.

With governments at all levels deeply in the red, Gov. Cuomo won state contracts that include zero raises for three years, and Mayor Bloomberg is following the pattern. The MTA must hold the same line to avoid slamming riders with still more fare increases or service cuts.

Both would inevitably result if the MTA relented, as a new analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission makes clear. The public is in no mood for either, nor will riders have the patience for a pains-in-the-neck rule book slowdown.

There's light at the end of Samuelsen's tunnel: He can purchase raises by finding productivity measures that save the MTA an equivalent amount of money. Sooner or later in this political and financial landscape, he'll see that train pull into the station.