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The New York Post put the story on Page 4 of Tuesday's Paper

Union Hammers Foye on Car Cleaner Cuts

TWU Local 100 has been hammering MTA Chairman Patrick Foye for the authority’s Car Cleaner cuts and anti-worker rhetoric. Administrative Vice President Nelson Rivera provided the media with photos of disgusting subway car conditions at the Stillwell Terminal in Coney Island. The photos highlight the understaffing and the harsh working environment of the subway.

“These disgusting conditions are terrible for riders and workers,” TWU Local 100 Administrative Vice President Nelson Rivera said. “If MTA Chairman Pat Foye wants to talk about ‘worker availability,’ he needs to recognize that this environment and unacceptable assaults are causing workers to get sick and injured.”

Local 100 secured coverage from news channels CBS2, NBC4 , WPIX11 and Fox 5; The City, an on-line news publication staffed by veteran NYC reporters; The New York Post and The Staten Island Advance.

The MTA has cut 81 terminal Car Cleaner positions in the last couple of years through attrition.

30 Apprentices Graduate; Heading to MOW and Better Careers

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At 38 years of age, Sakina Brown, a NYC Transit Cleaner (scroll through the photos -- she's in blue shirt and white pants with her two daughters), went back to school. She spent six months learning carpentry, masonry, plumbing and electrical in the industrial classrooms and tool-laden shops of The Apex Technical School in Long Island City, Queens. At night, Brown, a single mother of two daughters, studied take-home materials, including building codes, and prepared for tests on both theory and application.

It all paid off on Monday, Aug. 26, when Brown – in front of her two girls, her mother, sister and two nieces – graduated along with 29 other transit workers. They are now Transit Structure Apprentices - and solidly on new career paths as tradesmen and tradeswomen. “I’m proud of myself,” Brown said. “It’s a big accomplishment, and I’m grateful. Because the union gave me this opportunity, it will be so much easier for me to get a promotion and better pay.”

Part of the training included building two small structures – one brick and one wood framed – with fully functioning electrical systems and plumbing.  “It was tough,” graduate Craig Hodge, 40, a former CTA, said. “When everyone got here they all probably thought it was going to be a cakewalk but it was challenging. We had to learn so much in a short amount of time.” For the next three years, Brown and the other graduates of the program, which is administered by the TWU Local 100/NYCT Training & Upgrading Fund, will work side-by side with Transit carpenters, masons, electricians and plumbers. The next step will be elevation into Maintainer titles.

“Congratulations,” Local 100 President Tony Utano told the graduates at a ceremony at the Queensboro Plaza school. “Today, a trade is like gold. They don’t have enough people in the trades in the city, state and country. Everbody learns computers, but they don’t know how to fix and build things.” Local 100 Secretary-Treasurer Earl Phillips, Administrative Vice President Nelson Rivera and Car Equipment Vice President Shirley Martin also were on hand to congratulate the grads. “You should very proud of yourselves,” Rivera said. “You made a big accomplishment. Every one of you.” He urged the group to learn from the veterans in the field, and to share their knowledge with the union brothers and sisters that come up behind them.

TWU Local 100 secured NYC Transit funding for the program in contract negotiations. This was the third transit class to graduate from Apex since the trades program was revived three years ago, TUF Director Charles Jenkins said.

In Today's Daily News, Utano Blasts MTA Chairman Foye's Contract Proposal

AUGUST 27 -- Local 100 President Tony Utano responds to the MTA's latest contract proposal on the editorial page of today's Daily News. The piece, which was retweeted by the NYC Central Labor Council, puts responsbility on the MTA for not acknowledging the dedication and commitment of the transit workforce, which has been responsible for the restoration of a state of good repair and continued improvements in service statistics. Here is the text of President Utano's Op-Ed:

Transit workers know garbage when they see it. After all, we remove tons of it from the subway and bus system every day. The contract demands that MTA Chairman Pat Foye wants to impose on transit workers are garbage. They include attacking our health insurance, converting full-time jobs to part-time positions, and giving more work to expensive private contractors.

Are they out of their minds? Do they think living in New York has gotten less expensive? Do they think it’s cheaper to buy groceries, pay the rent, pay the mortgage or send your kids to college? Do people have part-time families that can be supported by part-time work? For 85 years, transit workers and Transport Workers Union Local 100 have fought to establish a decent standard of living for the men and women who move millions of people a day. We’re not going backwards. We will fight these demands together.

The MTA desperately wants riders to believe that bus and subway workers, and the contracts we negotiated with the MTA over the years, are to blame for its inability to close budget gaps. In reality, the problem has been gross mismanagement, as The New York Daily News has accurately reported many times. As the paper reported earlier this month: “Bad management caused the MTA to bust its overtime budget last year, says a consultant who shot down allegations of widespread overtime abuse in the cash-strapped agency.” As it reported last month: “MTA foul-ups led to extensive delays and budget overruns in critical subway upgrades, new controller report says….The controller’s reports said that several boneheaded moves by MTA officials were responsible for much of the delay.”

And in June: “Decades of mismanagement forced the MTA into a costly cleanup of subway drains — a multi-million dollar repair job necessary to speed trains and improve service.” Mismanagement didn’t start under Foye, but it continued under his watch. He was MTA president between August 2017 and April 2019, when he became chairman. Foye recently claimed transit workers are taking too much time off and are needlessly driving up labor costs. I don’t know how he came up with the “availability” statistics he cited without explanation at an MTA board meeting, and I don’t really trust them. I do know, however, about the conditions under which Local 100 members work. We work under live train traffic and around electrified third rails. We work in the extreme cold and extreme heat. We breathe in diesel fumes in bus depots and steel dust in subway tunnels. And we suffer for it.

We move 7.8 million riders a day. That includes people who are sick themselves, sneezing and coughing because they have some type of contagious virus. We get sick because of the environment we work in. In the last two years, nearly 2,300 bus and subway workers were hurt in on-the-job accidents in the tunnels, repair shops, rail yards, bus depots and other parts of the system. Another 550 subway conductors, bus operators, train operators, and workers in other titles, were attacked and assaulted. Nearly 280 train crewmembers were traumatized because someone jumped, fell or was pushed in front of their subway train. Transit workers were spit upon 358 times in those two years. This is all according to the Transit Authority’s own numbers.

TWU Local 100 members endure all of this while carrying an enormous responsibility. Whether we are operating a bus or a train, fixing decades-old signals and track, or maintaining train cars, the lives of millions of people are in our hands every day.  Foye is making a mistake. Transit workers are angry. They are fed up. They are sick and tired of being assaulted on the job for wearing the MTA uniform. And they are disgusted at the MTA for dragging their reputations through the mud. It’s a shameful and dangerous attempt to turn riders against workers. You think you hate the MTA? You should try working for it.

You can read the MTA's contract demands here.

You can read the Union's contract demands here.

Union to Honor Transit 9/11 Workers on Sept 5

Over 3,000 transit workers took part in the rescue and recovery effort on and after 9/11/2001. When the towers went down, tons of rocks and rubble had to be removed so that rescue crews could get to underground spaces where people people might have survived. In the first days, transit provided the heavy equipment to do that job. We also used lo-boys and other rigs to move abandoned cars, cleaned and inspected subway stations in the area, and brought hundreds of rescue personnel to the scene on city buses -- along with rescuing many who were trapped by the cloud of debris. But the story of what transit workers did at 9/11 has not gotten the recognition it deserves. For that reason, we hold our annual commemoration of 9/11 and transit's role in the rescue and recovery effort. Join your fellow TWU Local 100 brothers and sisters on Thursday, September 5th at the Union Hall for a 5pm event. Union members who participated in rescue and recovery are entitled to receive a commemorative pin. To receive the pin, we ask that you fill out an affidavit which will be notarized at the event, attesting to your service. Those who have been injured and have verified Victim's Compensation Fund claims are entitled to receive our official medal. For more information about the pins and medals, click here.