EXCLUSIVE: Transit union angry at MTA for giving temporary jobs to retired motormen

[realizm]

 

BY PETE DONOHUE

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Saturday, August 23, 2014, 2:30 AM

 

Retired subway motorman Mike Mahar won an unusual blue-collar lottery, and now can shout — as happy as a Super Bowl champ — “I’m going to Disney World.”

 

Citing a shortage of subway train operators, the MTA in April offered the 65-year-old Mahar his old job back temporarily. Not only would the Queens grandfather get paid, but he could still collect his pension, transit executives explained by letter.

 

Mahar of Rego Park readily agreed. He climbed back into the operator’s cab in July. “It was an opportunity to make a little extra money to take the family on a nice vacation,” Mahar said.

 

Mahar is one of 19 retired motormen the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has re-hired on temporary assignments to drive diesel work trains. He expects to take home about $15,000 by the time his tour ends in October. He said he will travel with his wife to Walt Disney World in Florida and visit relatives in California.

 

“It’s a great little plus,” Mahar said of the extra dough.

 

Read more: Source

[QM1to6Ave]

As the RTO members on here have posted, Few people are actually taking up the offer. They are making such a stink over 19 retirees?? It does seem like the MTA has been running a lot of school car classes over the last few months. The articles fails to mention that you need lots of training before you can do a safety sensitive job like operate a subway!

[Blitz]

I heard that a couple of the rto union officers are retired MTA employees. They receive a pension and a union paycheck. kind of hypocritical if you ask me...

[SubwayGuy]

The problem with this particular six month period is that there was a big hiring blitz that started just about two years ago, and a number of open work train jobs went unfilled due to many of those train operators having less than 2 years in title, which is the minimum amount of time needed to be able to choose a job in work trains. They tried getting people to work their days off in work trains, but the problem was you had to commit to working at least 2 days off a month. In a job where time off is hard pressed to get as it is, rightfully not many would want to do this. There were other possible solutions to this:

 

-Change the requirement to 1 year or 18 months instead of 2.

-Create more permanent work train jobs, while leaving the work train "extra" list alone (aka add more jobs) - a lot of people with some seniority are reluctant to pick jobs that might get cancelled and leave them with super rookie status as a floater.

 

The reason the union is fighting this is not the possibility of a retiree earning a few bucks. It's because it's a slippery slope that opens the door to letting in part time workers. Now what happens if there's a major structural problem in a busy corridor someday and work trains are needed to help repair it? It may be retirees today, but what if it becomes a slippery slope of just "anyone with railroad experience"??? It's not a good precedent to set.

 

Likewise, what if it involves a service expansion that doesn't line up with the employee selection? Now, where employees in a given district should have the right to re-select assignments, there's a precedent that could be expanded to allow temporary workers to be brought in to work the road until the next selection.

 

You have to see the picture here. By itself it's not a bad thing, but it sets a dangerous precedent, and court cases are all about precedent. When something little is let go, it usually winds up being something big later.

[RTOMan]

The problem with this particular six month period is that there was a big hiring blitz that started just about two years ago, and a number of open work train jobs went unfilled due to many of those train operators having less than 2 years in title, which is the minimum amount of time needed to be able to choose a job in work trains. They tried getting people to work their days off in work trains, but the problem was you had to commit to working at least 2 days off a month. In a job where time off is hard pressed to get as it is, rightfully not many would want to do this. There were other possible solutions to this:

 

-Change the requirement to 1 year or 18 months instead of 2.

-Create more permanent work train jobs, while leaving the work train "extra" list alone (aka add more jobs) - a lot of people with some seniority are reluctant to pick jobs that might get cancelled and leave them with super rookie status as a floater.

 

The reason the union is fighting this is not the possibility of a retiree earning a few bucks. It's because it's a slippery slope that opens the door to letting in part time workers. Now what happens if there's a major structural problem in a busy corridor someday and work trains are needed to help repair it? It may be retirees today, but what if it becomes a slippery slope of just "anyone with railroad experience"??? It's not a good precedent to set.

 

Likewise, what if it involves a service expansion that doesn't line up with the employee selection? Now, where employees in a given district should have the right to re-select assignments, there's a precedent that could be expanded to allow temporary workers to be brought in to work the road until the next selection.

 

You have to see the picture here. By itself it's not a bad thing, but it sets a dangerous precedent, and court cases are all about precedent. When something little is let go, it usually winds up being something big later.

Exactly couldn't have said it better myself oh and for those "oh I'm sure I can swing this part time""...

 

There's another reason why they are so high up on the TO list retirements are part of it but folks just aren't cutting it for such a "simple" job....

[SubwayGuy]

Exactly couldn't have said it better myself oh and for those "oh I'm sure I can swing this part time""...

 

There's another reason why they are so high up on the TO list retirements are part of it but folks just aren't cutting it for such a "simple" job....

 

Because the public thinks they can do our job. The appearance it is unskilled is completely false, but that's the way all blue collar jobs have been treated in the past 15 years ("oh I don't need a degree it must be easy") yet in the corporate world some of the people with the most degrees are the worst F ups out there. The rule book may be hundreds of pages deep, but there are several very basic principles that people are missing these days. Sadly many new people are missing these very basic things, whether it's from their old perception as an outsider, or just an entitlement attitude that a lot of people are bringing with them in all walks of life, not just Transit:

 

-Communicate, whether with your partner, a tower, or RCC. STOP and DO NOTHING if you aren't 100% that everyone is on the same page.

-Ask if you don't know. Don't guess.

-Know where you're going, and how you're getting there.

-Respect and don't challenge the signals, and always read the rail.

-Control the train.

-Don't be lazy, and do your job.