TWU

I’ve been pretty busy lately with less time than I’d like to devote to the site. I haven’t had much time to do much long-form reporting over the last few wees, but there are still a series of newsworthy happenings. Let’s run them down.

Profiling the train that collects the trash

After much hand-wringing over the cleanliness of eating on the subway, Pete Donohue took a ride on the garbage collection train for his Daily News column this week. Deep in Brooklyn, Donohue hopped the Southern, one of eight garbage trains currently in use and rode one of the 9:30 p.m.-to-5 a.m. shifts. Transit crews, he reports, pick up 90 tons of garbage per day, and perhaps that’s why rodents are so numerous underground.

Rife: Keeping an eye on the looming labor negotiations

Up in the Hudson Valley, Judy Rife of the Times Herald-Record has her eye on the looming negotiations between the MTA and the TWU. MTA CEO Jay Walder has vowed to maintain a “net zero” increase in the cost of labor spending as the union contracts come due, and Rife wants to hold Walder to his promise. “There can’t be any increase in the value of the contract, but raises are still possible if they’re counter-balanced by other savings,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said to her. This is clearly a story I’ll be following this year.

Inside the Long Island Bus battle

In the Our Towns section in The Times today, Peter Applebome profiles the LI Bus debate. The fight between Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano and the MTA is well-trodden territory for SAS readers, but essentially, the county wants the MTA to foot the operations costs for Long Island Bus despite agreeing to fund the bill itself. The MTA has proposed cutting more than half of the bus routes, and Mangano keeps making noises about privatization despite extreme skepticism.

Politicians and activists are watching this fight to see how it’s resolved. “Simply put, County Executive Mangano is dreaming,” Kate Slevin, head of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said last week. “Let me make this clear — no other system in the country does what Mangano wants to do. Most county governments with private systems provide much more in the way of government funding, not less.”

The TWU, as we learned earlier this week, isn’t happy about the city’s plans to use dollar vans to replace shuttered bus routes. While the city and the Taxi & Limousine Commission are moving full speed ahead with a plan to privatize these bus routes, TWU President John Samuelsen has called these replacement offerings the Wal-Mar-tization of transit. The vans, he alleges, are unsafe and undercut union jobs and should not be embraced by New Yorkers looking for transit options after the MTA’s service cuts. But that isn’t stopping the MTA from offering its own dollar vans in Brooklyn come September.

The TWU says it has been selected by the TLC to run the commuter van service in Park Slope, The Wall Street Journal reported. The vans will run out my front door along the route of the now-defunct B71 from Prospect Heights through Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, and TWU Express, a non-profit subsidiary of the transport workers union, will operate the vans with TWU members behind the wheel.

Drivers will earn between $24-$26 — the going rate for union bus drivers — and will wear standardized dress that does not suggest an affiliation with the MTA. “Our plan is to have an initial fare of $1 to attract back the ridership on the line,” Arthur Schwartz, a TWU attorney, said. “We’ll adjust from there.”

There is but one catch: As it is trying to cash on the new routes, the TWU is also trying to sue the city in an effort to block this commuter van program. As first reported in The Chief-Leader earlier this week, the TWU has requested an injunction from a Manhattan judge against the TLC’s plan. “We’re playing both sides,” Schwartz said.

Ari Paul offered up a summary of the union’s position:

Union officials have long had a problem with so-called dollar-van services, arguing that they are lessregulated than publicly owned buses and that replacing transit service with small private companies was anti-union. Mr. Schwartz claimed in court Aug. 6 before Justice Anil Singh that the pilot program is unlawful, because giving one or several van companies exclusive access to former bus routes constitutes a franchise, which can be authorized only by the City Council. He also told the judge that the pilot program confused “for-hire” vans, which are not allowed to pick up passengers hailing vehicles off the street and are governed by the TLC, with “commuter” vans, which fall under the jurisdiction of the city Department.

The TWU is perfectly comfortable question the commuter vans as Samuelsen did in The Brooklyn Paper while angling to run a route themselves. It’s a politically feasible and smart strategy designed to keep union members working while showing how transit routes could be run in the city. “We’re going to offer trained bus drivers who have basic training, paid at union rate, the former bus driver rate,” Schwartz said to The Chief-Leader. “They’ll have health insurance and care a lot about their licenses because they’re going to want to go back to being bus drivers one day.”

For its part, the Taxi and Limousine Commission says the TWU’s bid has yet to be accepted officially, but David Yassky, the agency commission, seems willing to embrace the union’s plan. He said to WNYC that he would “love to have transit worker level service” as part of the commuter van pilot. Meanwhile, some union members are skeptical. “The union shouldn’t get involved with that,” Henry Feliciano, a bus driver in Manhattan, said to Paul. “They should try to get the jobs back.”

Sometimes, getting those jobs back simply involves a touch of creativity and a lawsuit at the same time.