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Station Agent Percillia Augustine-Soverall

Seven Years for Booth Arsonist

Good riddance.

A Brooklyn man who tried to rob a station agent - and then attempted to set her booth on fire - is going to state prison. Everett Robinson, 52, pled guilty Wednesday to attempted robbery in Brooklyn Supreme Court. A judge is now scheduled sentence Robinson to seven years behind bars next month. Robinson doused the booth aperture with gasoline and lit a rag with hopes of sparking an inferno. Fortunately, the station’s fire-suppression system snuffed out the flames - but it was a deadly dangerous, and incredibly callous, criminal act.

“This defendant tried to rob an MTA employee who was simply doing her job and put her and the public in serious danger when he started a fire inside a subway station, making the prison term he will receive appropriate and just,” Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement to Local 100.

Robinson’s victim, Station Agent Percillia Augustine-Soverall, 45, said she was satisfied with the punishment, which is part of a plea agreement Brooklyn prosecutors hashed out with Robinson’s defense attorney. She has returned to work and is focusing on the future. “Every day is a struggle but I have to move forward,” she said. “I can’t let this deter me. I just hope no other station agent has to go through what I went through.” Augustine-Soverall was in the booth at the Nostrand Ave. station on the No. 3 line in Crown Heights one Friday night last August when Robinson poured a liquid that smelled like gasoline into the aperture, she said.  “He said that if I didn’t give him the money, he would light me up,” Augustine-Soverall, who has been on the job about five years, said.

Robinson then held up a shirt or rag, lit in on fire and tried to stuff it through the opening. Smoke from the burning cloth filled the mezzanine and booth, triggering the Halon fire-suppression system. “Everything was just cloudy in the booth,” Augustine-Soverall said. “I couldn’t do anything…I just started crying. I was in shock.”

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Bruce Balter is scheduled to formally sentence Robinson on Aug. 16. In his statement, Gonzalez, who is running to fill the DA seat vacated by the sudden death of Ken Thompson earlier this year, also said in his statement to Local 100 that he is “committed to protecting our dedicated transit workers, who all too often are targets of threats and violence, and will continue to ensure that those who attack them are punished.” Such a pledge from a prosecutor is always welcome, and Local 100 has endorsed Gonzalez in the race.

But Local 100 didn’t take anything for granted in the Robinson case. Dozens of TWU Local 100 members and officers attended Robinson’s arraignment before another judge, William Harrington, packing the courtroom and casting withering stares at the criminal. Local 100 members then marched down the hallway with their fists in the air as photographers from the New York Daily News and New York Post snapped away. Stations Vice President Derick Echevarria and Chairman Joe Bermudez told the reporters Local 100 was pleased with the charges brought by prosecutors. But they blasted Justice Harrington for denying a media request to take Robinson’s photograph in the courtroom. “Why is he coddling someone who tried to kill one of our members, a Station Agent who was simply doing her job serving the riders?,” Bermudez said. It was a good show of solidarity. It demonstrated to prosecutors and judges in the building that the Local 100 and its 42,000-strong membership was watching.

Transit Workers Respond as We Always Do in Latest Emergency

As City, State and MTA officials seemed to be losing their collective heads over the ‘A’ Train derailment on Tuesday morning, TWU train crews and Maintenance of Way personnel calmly and quickly got the situation under control.

The derailment at the end of the morning rush caused panic among the passengers as smoke invaded some of the cars. The train’s crew immediately began an orderly and professional evacuation.  The crew got the vast majority of passengers to walk to the front of the train to get out onto the platform through the first two cars which made it into the station.  Some panicked passengers left the train from the rear onto the tracks to walk back to the previous station.  The crew urged those passengers to return to the train and get out the safe way through the front.  Most listened.

After all passengers were accounted for, Local 100 Maintenance personnel moved in like the cavalry.  All MOW titles responded.  Debris was removed from the tracks, signals were repaired, and the train was rerailed and moved out of the way.  Modified service was restored before the evening rush. MOW members continued work throughout the night to get the system ready for the morning.

Tony Utano, TWU Local 100 Vice President for the Maintenance of Way Division, said: “This was a serious derailment, with quite of bit of damage to signals and some structural damage to the walls.  Our members worked as fast and safely as possible to bring the system back to normal.”

Local 100 President John Samuelsen responded to numerous media outlets and insisted that subway system needs a substantial and immediate infusion of cash, mainly from the City of New York, for non-capital state of good repair work. “The long-term capital projects are vital to providing a modern, safe, reliable system in the future,” said Samuelsen.  “But what is needed today, immediately, is more financial resources for regular, on-going maintenance to insure that the system can handle today’s record ridership.”

Exclusive photos of the scene were provided by Track Chair Paul Navarro and Vice Chair Duvet Williams.

Click on the following links to see how the story of the derailment played out in the media, and how TWU members and officials are quoted.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/motorman-stayed-calm-harlem-subway-derailment-article-1.3283824

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-seen-on/Transit-Dispute-After-MTA-Supervisors-Suspended_New-York-431390943.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/subway-supervisors-suspended-train-derailment-article-1.3284904

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/nyregion/subway-derailment-inquiry.html

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/manhattan/transit/2017/06/28/a-train-derailment-latest.html

http://pix11.com/2017/06/28/supervisors-suspended-amid-harlem-subway-derailment-probe/

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Subway-System-Meltdown-Emergency-Commuter-Frustration-New-York-Penn-Station-Amtrak-Summer-Work-431566333.html

http://abc7ny.com/traffic/2-mta-track-supervisors-suspended-in-subway-derailment/2159386/

Quality Bus Members Approve Contract, 146-8

JUNE 23 -- TWU Local 100 School Bus Operators at Brooklyn-based Quality Transportation voted overwhelmingly to approve a new contract on Friday, June 23. The agreement, which runs from July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2020, and brings top pay for Drivers to $31 after nine years of service, was approved by a vote of 146 to 8. About 220 Drivers work for the company.

Other contract provisions include a higher 401(k) from the employer, the granting of a paid emergency leave day in addition to existing vacation days and holidays, and a yearly safety bonus for no accidents. Another provision in the new contract gives employees five days bereavement paid leave for the loss of an member of their immediate family. This recognizes that many Drivers, immigrants to the US, have family abroad.

Local 100 School Bus Division Chair Gus Moghrabi, who headed up the union negotiating team, MOW Vice President Tony Utano and MOW LES Chair John Chiarello, and Director of Organizing Frank McCann were among the union officials who visited on the day of the vote.

Executive Board Names Shirley Martin New CED Vice President

JULY 31 -- The TWU Local 100 Executive Board today unanimously named veteran CED officer Shirley Martin as Vice President of Car Equipment.  She will fill out the unexpired term of Vice President Nelson Rivera, who was elevated to Administrative Vice President last March.

Rivera introduced the motion on Martin at the monthly Executive Board meeting at Union Headquarters.  It was seconded by Vice President Tony Utano.

After the vote, Martin was asked to join the meeting and was sworn into office by Local 100 and International President John Samuelsen to the enthusiastic applause of the Board.  She is the first woman to serve as Vice President from CED.

Shirley is a 25-year veteran of New York City Transit’s Car Equipment Department.  Hired as a Car Maintainer B, a machinist title, she was the first woman to operate the wheel grinding machine at Coney Island Overhaul, that shapes subway car wheels into true circles.

In her native Jamaica, Martin was also the first woman to graduate from Kingston Technical High School as a Machinist, then going to work – also in a first – for the Bauxite Company, an industrial firm that extracted the valuable mineral in aluminum production.  She was also the the first woman union rep of Jamaica’s National Workers Union (NWU) at the Bauxite Company.

Martin’s TWU Local 100 union career includes positions as Shop Steward, Division Vice Chair for Coney Island Overhaul Shop, Recording Secretary for the Division, Division Chair, and Executive Board Member.

Her objectives for her new assignment: “Get back into the field, visit the different shops, talk to our terminal cleaners, and address safety issues.”