In my overview of Jay Walder’s trip to Albany, I mentioned briefly the MTA CEO and Chair’s statement on the MTA’s $100 million gap. Because the state reappropriated dedicated transit revenue, the authority is going to have to scramble to save money, and for now, fares and service levels will remain constant.
“We will not look to service cuts and we will not look to fare increases. We will look, as we have been doing, for ways that we can continue to reduce our cost structure,” Walder said. “Well we’ve said and I’ll continue to say is that we’re working on a plan right now to be able to deal with that.”
As the Daily News wrote, TWU head John Samuelsen took that as a shot across the union’s bow. Samuelsen called Walder’s comments “blackmail” and claimed that by cutting personnel, service would suffer. “The only place that they can get that money from is the maintenance side of the house,” he said. “The fleet is already in pretty bad shape.”
Two points in reply: First, the fleet itself isn’t in that bad a shape. With the new rolling stock, mean distances between failures have dropped precipitously, and the MTA is still spending on car maintenance. The rest of the infrastructure, though, is suffering. Station cleanliness is nearly non-existent, and while the component-based repair program has started, it’s slow going. Without an infusion of capital cash or the manpower to fulfill demand, the system will degrade.
The second point is one Isaac left in this comment yesterday. Noting how the TWU, Transportation Alternatives and the Straphangers are all a part of the Rider Rebellion, he spoke of the tension amongst the three groups. The latter two support riders while the TWU is — and should be — protecting the workers. MTA innovation often leads to fewer expenditures on personel, and the TWU has rightly protested there.
Here, if the trade-off is between jobs and service or fare levels, the MTA should do what it can to protect the transportation services the riders need. If that means layoffs until the economy recovers, that is a trade-off we must be willing to take as long as service levels do not suffer. The rider and the need to travel should remain of paramount importance right now.
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I’m not optimistic that “layoffs until the economy recovers” will be enough. Had the union been smart, politicians given a damn, and MTA management competent (actually, we can pretty much alternate those adjectives in any manner we choose), we would have found ways to expand the system so those extra employees had jobs they could be retrained for. Instead, every single negotiation has been about preserving the status quo. That goes back way before the current economic crisis too – just like the MTA’s chronic difficulty keeping its head above the water line has been going on as long as I can remember.
Dont you know the MTA stands for Metropolitan Tithing Authority? Its the sister agency of the Human Resources Administration.
“With the new rolling stock, mean distances between failures have dropped precipitously,”
What about buses? There are still a lot of older buses on the road. Hopefully they won’t cut back on maintenance too much so that the A line does not become the next New Haven line. If the MTA wants to save money, they should consider doing more work in house with MTA track workers instead of contractors.
I don’t think buses go back much further than 1996 or so.
Would any additional economy of scale be achieved if track workers could actually do track work throughout the system? LIRR, MNRR, and NYCTA all seem to have their own track workers.
15 years is old for a bus, especially when you consider all of the wear and tear they are getting. I’m sure a bus drives as many miles in one year as the average car owner drives during the life of their car.
Yeah, surely that’s true. A driver was telling me on the Q39 that his bus had been running for the past 36 hours.
However, those are the oldest. But if wikipedia is to be believed, there is still a number in service from the 1990s.
But unlike a car, buses get all their parts overhauled and replaced. Replacing an engine on a car is never cost effective. The car will always be junkyarded before “major” repairs take place. Buses get new/overhauled/refurbished engines and transmissions on a schedule, unlike cars. Until the MTA Bus take over, the private bus companies were still uses RTSes from the late 1970s. Cosmetically they were horrible, but they functionally fine.
Of course it could. Reducing size of crews would help as well. there are $100k a year ticket punchers on the LIRR. Why do we need to separate presidents as well. NYCT is far larger operation and it has 1 president
That doesn’t necessarily mean a top-down administration is best either. Re track workers, the sheer size of the various sub-agencies’ surface territories could excuse the lack of crew sharing. Or not.
A technicality: The bus union is, by and large, different from the TWU. I’m sure Samuelsen is concerned with those jobs as well, but he’s much more concerned with TWU jobs.
Most city transit seems to be Local 100. Just so Glenn Beck knows who to blame for the Subways not working:
– TWU web site
They apparently include the MTA Bus depots now too. I believe MTA Bus was spun out separately precisely because they were operators on private lines who never had to take a civil service exam.
And most would not pay the member dues if not forced to. What the public does not get is that many of the workers DO NOT support the union stance and are powerless to do anything about it. In NYS you have tax free union dues taken out of your paycheck even if you do not want to be a member. The unions would be far more responsive to there members needs if they had to earn the dues each week. The unions just care about maximum headcount and keeping things as inefficient as possible. There are buses that drive 35 min on and off route when a depot is much closer. The reason the change is not made is that one depot is ATU and the other TWU
You can vote to change your union President, you know. You can even vote to change unions. If, that is, you have a *majority* of the workers on your side.
Queens is also ATU(1056). Casey Stengel, Jamaica and
Queens Village bus depots.
They have been without a contract for awhile.
Blowerk is right. The TWU represents most bus drivers as well as bus mechanics. It’s the same union as subway workers and same local.
It’s strange. I’d kind of support Wisconsin’s public unions, but I wouldn’t really support the TWU.
Maybe it’s cuz the TWU seems so intend to fight for the bad status quo, whereas in Wisconsin they seem to understand the necessity to cut costs, and are actually fighting for their survival. A bit more balance would be nice.
Well, the agenda and ideology of Scott Walker and his Republikan friends is pretty abhorrent. Nobody (nobody seriously able to push such an agenda, anyway) is demanding TWU members lose their benefits, collective bargaining rights, etc.. I, for one, would demand they actually bargain to begin with. That said, if they can’t loosen up work rules, find some people to make lateral or even downward moves by attrition, or try to find some people willing to take cut in their working hours, the union isn’t very useful as a vehicle for labor input. And it’s not like they come up with ideas of their own; they could propose a surface LRT system, using (useless) conductors as motormen – but then they would have to admit that the conductors aren’t needed, at least nowhere near as much as they’re currently used.
There are also some competing prerogatives with TWU politics I think. Samuelson may not give two wits about his members, but he can’t politically support laying off anybody. He can, however, quietly prefer layoffs to pay cuts. The laid off presumably lose their stake in the TWU eventually anyway. Everyone who takes a pay cut still has a vote.
“or try to find some people willing to take cut in their working hours”
I don’t know how you can do that in a system that runs 24/7/365. Were not talking about a DMV office where you can furlough employees.
The MTA has plenty of not strictly necessary employees; NYCTA train conductors and token booth clerks are the most visible. Not saying they should all be flat out eliminated, but they can certainly see their hours reduced.
Conductors on all OFF peak trains are not needed at NYCT transit. A better use of the money would to provide train and station security. We spend far too much money repairing the affect of vandalism on trains and in stations. How many extra elevator problems are caused by people peeing in the mechanics or someone having to be paid to mom it up. 100% of all trains and station should have a human eye on them at all times via cctv and by walking patrols
Not all off peak trains. Midday loads can get pretty heavy during maintenance work, and rowdy HS teenage crowds 1-5PM can be unruly.
That said, overall, shunting conductors to system security, customer service, even PA announcers for an interim train position and arrival ETA update system would help increase service while not increasing labor costs.
Whatever the TWU’s faults, opposing BRT isn’t one of them. The TWU and ATU have publicly agreed with management that BRT, and NYC’s SBS version, are an opportunity to make buses a more attractive transit option. TWU supported bus enforcement camera legislation in Albany and has written positively about SBS. Unfortunately, TWU and the MTA have not joined together to jointly promote SBS in the parts of Queens and Brooklyn where it has run into local opposition from double parkers and shop owners, and double parking shop owners.
“TWU supported bus enforcement camera legislation in Albany ”
They support it to get extra money which they can hold the public hostage over in the next contract when they cry poverty an low wages. The wage structure for unskilled jobs at the twu is NUTS. Train sweepers making $35 an hour(including benefits)
Most cleaners in the system are actually welfare recipiebnts Sharon. I don’t know where your getting $35 an hour from.
Welfare recipients vs. $35/hour? Hard to say which claim is more laughably ridiculous.
Are you doubtuing what I said? My father was a conductor for 30 years. I know a thing or two about the system that the average person does not, FYI.
From straphangers.org:
“Instead of restoring full-time cleaners to the job, however, it revived its ill-fated plan from 1996 to use welfare recipients enrolled in the city’s Work Experience Program. The decision to use welfare recipients by the MTA again raises real questions about the transit agency’s commitment to clean subway cars.”
So you’re saying the MTA should be criticized for employing welfare recipients and giving them jobs in an effort to get them off welfare? Brilliant.
I never said that.
And in response to your post below with the link, I never said all cleaners are welfare recipients. Many of them are ex station agents or people who once held higher titles but messed up and got demoted.
An average salary of well over $40,000 a year does not put you anywhere close to welfare unless you are defrauding the system. Take a scan through this; cleaners are doing just fine for themselves.
They seem to make between $16/hr and $23/hr, with some outliers pulling in more. If they actually did their jobs well, that seems fairly reasonable.
Those outliers are probably longtime time employees with good records who for medical reasons no longer qualify for safety sensitive positions.
I think cleaners pay is roughly comparable to 32b+j.
I think that if the MTA is having money problems and r planning to do another round of layoffs, why r they rehiring ther 1st 125 booth clerks who were laid off as booth clerks again,and why r they rehiring the rest of the laid off clerks as station cleaners. It seems to me if MTA is btroke they should not b rehiring all these people, not to mention all the other ppl they r hiring off the street to fill job openings for all the other positions available in the MTA. Someone should also suggest that they get rid of the last in first out provision 4 all agencies state and city, because most of the old timers that r still working, who have 25 or 30 yrs on the job r the ones who r preventing the new jacks from keeping their jobs, and r also the ones who r usually dead set in their ways, that when they screw up, they mess up the whole job for everyone else.
That’s utter nonsense JFCR. If anything, the older workers know the system the best and are less likely to mess up.
At SEPTA Regional Rail, the old timers were the people who decided the managers were not real railroaders, and refused to let any reforms happen that would run trains more like urban transit.
REALITY> WAKE UP!!!