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"They saved my life:" Rider who was attacked in subway station protests layoffs

dkatzman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:02:53 -0500

Wednesday March 3, 2010
By Heather Haddon
AMNewYork

Michael Steinberg was attacked by a deranged man in 2006 at the 110th train subway stop and is advocating for booth attendants to keep their jobs. (Photo by Tiffany L. Clark)

Michael Steinberg doesn’t need to be told that station agents are vital to subway security. The proof is written in long scars crisscrossing his chest.

In 2006, a crazed man wielding two power hacksaws attacked Steinberg in his subway station, nearly ripping through the postal worker’s lungs in a drug-fueled rampage. If it wasn’t for a quick-thinking station agent, the Manhattan man would have bled to death.

“They do more then just sell MetroCards and give directions. They saved my life,” said Steinberg, 67.

He’s now fighting to keep the agents roaming the subway system as the cash-strapped MTA plans to fire 450 of them by May to save $21 million a year. All booths will have one token clerk on duty at all hours, and stations are equipped with intercoms to contact the on-duty worker for help, a NYC Transit spokesman said.

The MTA will close 100 token booths across the system, including at the 110th Street station on the No. 1 line — where Steinberg almost lost his life.

On July 6, Steinberg got to the station before dawn for his early work shift when he saw a man approaching him on the mezzanine. Tareyton Williams, a strip club bouncer with a history of drug arrests, had swiped two power saws left by crews at the station. Without saying a word, he went after Steinberg, cornering him in the station and hacking him in the chest.

“I was losing a lot of blood,” said Steinberg, a married man with an elderly mother. “I was saying, ‘God this is it.’”

The only other person in the station was Debra McIver, the token booth worker. The Manhattan woman frantically called for help using the emergency button equipped in all booths. In 2008, workers pressed the devices 171,370, according to agency figures.
“Our presence there is a deterrent to crime,” said Maurice Jenkins, the union head for stations, who estimated that workers call for help 50 times a day.

Police arrived just in time to rescue Steinberg and get him to St. Luke’s Hospital. The pain of inserting a breathing tube in his chest was so bad, that Steinberg had to clench a wooden board between his teeth.

Williams, who later apologized, was sentenced to 18 years prison. After extensive physical therapy, Steinberg has recovered, but suffers some lung damage. He still rides the subways, and will testify about the need for station agents during a Manhattan public hearing Thursday.

A transit spokesman said that crime in the subways is at historic lows, and transit cops will “ensure that trend continues.”

MTA Fails to Honestly Rate Contractors’ Work, Report Says

dkatzman — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:58:37 -0500

NY Times
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Feb 2 2010

Outside contractors working on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s biggest projects are routinely given positive evaluations despite mediocre work, in part to preserve business relationships, an investigation by the authority’s inspector general has found.

A system to evaluate contractors’ performance, in place for 12 years, was intended to help the authority keep inadequate contractors from landing future jobs, many of which are worth upward of a million dollars in public funds.

But fewer than 5 percent of the 2,579 contractors evaluated between 2006 and 2008 received a grade of marginal, and fewer than 1 percent were graded unsatisfactory, the lowest mark, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. In several instances, evaluators reported feeling pressured by upper management to raise their ratings, apparently to avoid hampering the authority’s ability to deal with vendors in the future.

“Managers sometimes allowed what they perceived to be agency ‘business decisions’ to override their true assessments of contractor performance,” the report found, noting that there is “an institutional reluctance, for a variety of reasons, to rate contractors’ work as ‘unsatisfactory,’ even when such ratings are the most appropriate.”

The authority is constantly under fire for rampant delays and ballooning budgets on its major construction projects, including the Second Avenue subway, which are often handled nearly entirely by private contractors. Jay H. Walder, the authority’s chairman, admitted last month that some vendors told him they build an “M.T.A. premium” into their bids, because of the perceived difficulty of working on projects with the authority.

“Too often we have let our contractors slide when they fail to perform, and that is why we have accepted the I.G.’s recommendations and are working to implement them,” Mr. Walder said Tuesday in a prepared statement.

The report, issued by Barry L. Kluger, the authority’s inspector general, found that the lack of accuracy in the evaluation process led to vendors’ receiving contracts worth tens of millions of dollars despite poor past performance.

“Transparency is lost when evaluations are deficient or late, and when vendors are overrated,” the report said. Mr. Kluger characterized the authority’s aversion to assigning low ratings as “a pervasive mindset, amounting to an institutional culture.”
In one instance, managers at the Long Island Rail Road waited more than nine months to grade one vendor, DMJM & Harris, as unsatisfactory, after the firm’s work on a 2005 environmental consulting contract was deemed deficient. In the interim, that vendor received five more contracts worth nearly $25 million from New York City Transit, Metro-North Railroad, and the authority’s bridges and tunnels division; none of those other agencies were aware of any problems with the firm. (More than half of the evaluations at the Long Island Rail Road were filed late between 2006 and 2008.)

In 2006, Siemens, the technology company, contracted with New York City Transit to update subway signals so the signals could communicate with a central control center. An auditor found that the technology installed by the company consistently failed tests or inexplicably went off-line.

Under official guidelines, Siemens should have received an unsatisfactory rating. But a top official at New York City Transit instructed managers to instead assign a rating of “marginal,” a higher mark, because of business considerations. The official did not want to jeopardize Siemens’s ability to work with the agency in the future, the report said, and he apparently was unaware that an unsatisfactory rating does not strictly preclude contractors from bidding on other projects.

A similar rating upgrade occurred with a second Siemens contract in 2007, the report said.
In response to the report’s findings, the authority agreed to institute spot checks of the evaluations to ensure accuracy; prohibit the upgrading of unsatisfactory ratings in cases where certain reporting technicalities have not been met; and speed up the submission of the evaluations, among other measures.

But citing legal concerns, the authority declined to introduce a similarly strict evaluation system for subcontractors, who perform about three-quarters of its capital workload. Such a system is already in place at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

“Despite the troubling aspects of what we found, we are encouraged that the MTA accepted all of the major findings in our reports, and has expressed its eagerness to work with us regarding our recommendations,” Mr. Kluger said. “A number of these meetings have already taken place.”

MTA execs who ordered service cuts are clueless 'bean counters' says transport union chief

transit — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:06:08 -0500

Daily News
By Pete Donohue
January 28 2010

MTA executives are a bunch of clueless "bean counters" for planning service cuts while funding non-essential projects, the transit union chief charged Wednesday.
Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen joined the Straphangers Campaign outside the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Madison Ave. headquarters Wednesday to criticize the authority's 2010 budget.
The litany of cuts include eliminating or scaling back dozens of bus routes.
"This document was obviously written by accountants, bean counters, people who obviously don't ride our system and who don't understand that these cuts are negatively impacting hundreds of thousands of New York's working families and their children," Samuelsen, who took office earlier this month, said. "They're clueless."
Samuelsen, whose members face layoffs, said the MTA should set aside projects like countdown clocks that authority brass want to install along bus routes.
The electronic message boards would tell riders how many minutes they can expect to wait for the next bus.
MTA Chairman Jay Walder has said he recognizes the service cuts will result in longer, and in some cases more crowded, trips for riders.
But he said the reductions are necessary because of state funding reductions and shrinking tax revenues.
If Gov. Paterson's proposed budget is included, MTA revenues are $500 million below what the state projected they would be just last spring, Walder said after this morning's MTA board meeting.
Still, Walder - a big proponent of the countdown clocks - said "we shouldn't let the economic downturn be an excuse for not improving service."

City Hall News: On a Roll After TWU Head Victory, Samuelsen Refuses To Roll Over On MTA

transit — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:56:19 -0500

Samuelsen lays tracks for more democratic Local 100, though doubts persist

City Hall News
By Chris Bragg
Jan 27 2010

MTA chairman Jay Walder and Transport Workers Union Local 100 president John Samuelsen, both new to their jobs, got together for their first meeting in mid- January.

On the agenda: the broad disagreements about the MTA’s budget policies over the next year and what that will mean for the union’s workforce.

The day after the meeting Walder said he felt he would be able to work with the new leader of the city’s subway and bus workers, given all his stridently anti-MTA public rhetoric.

“He has pledged to do so, and I have pledged to do so,” said Walder, projecting optimism. “But we’re both new to our jobs, so we’re finding our way.”

Samuelsen offered a darker assessment.

“We have diametrically opposite positions on a whole array of issues,” Samuelsen said. “It’s not going to be personally hostile. But we’re not going to just roll over, either.”

The new head of the 37,000-member union, who got his start as a track inspector, won election after a heated campaign that accused the previous administration of being too close to the MTA management— an assertion that might come as a surprise to New Yorkers who lived through the 2005 transit strike led by his predecessor, Roger Toussaint.

At the same time, Samuelsen comes into the job at a time when the MTA is reeling from a $400 million budget gap and is threatening layoffs.

Samuelsen said that in recent years the union’s anti-democratic leadership structure made it so the union actually was often fighting itself rather than fighting the MTA.

“Once we started doing that, we had no strength to compel management,” Samuelsen said, in an interview at the office he recently took over from Toussaint. “So the only alternative was to try and develop a relationship with the company and curry favor.”

That line of argument helped Samuelsen handily defeat Toussaint’s hand-picked successor, Curtis Tate, in early December. He has since appointed Tate to the union’s political action committee, in a gesture toward this newly democratic spirit.

Samuelson also enters office on the heels of an arbitrator’s ruling that Local 100 members should receive 11-percent raises over the next three years, despite the MTA’s financial woes.

In the MTA budget released in December, 700 layoffs of unionized workers were proposed. But instead of laying off union members, Samuelsen believes money should instead be diverted from the MTA’s capital budget in order to cover an operational deficit. Walder, however, is adamantly opposed to the idea and has spent much of his time looking for inefficiencies in the workforce.

Samuelsen was readying for a fight against management and he said that his experience so far with Walder has only reinforced a reputation that preceded him.

“Walder’s reputation from his experience in London is that he will come into town and try to balance his budget on the backs of organized labor,” Samuelsen said.

As the relationship between Walder and Samuelsen develops, others note that Toussaint also came into office with a strongly anti-MTA message, only to develop a relationship with MTA leadership in later years. Bill Henderson, executive director at the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, suggested the same dynamic could occur eventually between Samuelsen and Walder.

“Roger Toussaint came into office with a reputation as a firebrand kind of guy too,” Henderson said. “Eventually, the relationship changed.”

As the MTA goes through a period of fiscal crisis, Samuelsen said, his main task is now to empower the union rank and file politically in order to fight expected layoffs.

Samuelsen says he has personal experience with the anti-democratic nature of the union under Toussaint. During the early years of Toussaint’s tenure, Samuelsen worked his way into the president’s inner circle. But they had a falling out just weeks before the disastrous 2005 strike over Toussaint’s decision to try selling TWU Local 100’s longtime headquarters on West End Avenue, even as negotiations with the city were growing intense.

At a meeting of the union’s leadership, Samuelsen said the sale was a distraction from the real work at hand, and should be tabled until after the contract situation was resolved. For his disloyalty, Toussaint stripped Samuelsen of his well-paying administrative position and sent Samuelsen back to his old job as a track inspector.

“And that’s how we got here today,” said Samuelsen.

During the campaign for Toussaint’s replacement, the two were openly hostile towards one another. Toussaint at one point referred to Samuelsen as “mentally ill.”

Samuelsen filed a defamation lawsuit.

With the campaign over, Toussaint, who has taken a position with the national Transit Workers Union, declined to comment about his old nemesis.

“I have no need to speak over Mr. Samuelsen, and I wish them all well,” Toussaint said.

Since taking office, Samuelsen has taken steps he believes will make the union more democratic and encourage a healthy level of dissent. He also said that going forward, the union also would spend less money on expensive lobbyists and instead encourage the rank and file to meet with lawmakers and to run for office themselves.
All of this, he said, would help the union more aggressively confront Walder and the MTA.

“I’m a hardened trade union democrat, and I believe in it wholeheartedly,” Samuelsen said. “There’s no pure power in a system where members are kept in the dark and only a few officials are entitled to make decisions for a 40,000 member union.”

Crain's New York: Collision Course

dkatzman — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:01:32 -0500

New transit CEO. New labor chief. No money. Let the sparks fly

January 24, 2010 5:59 AM

By Daniel Massey

Last month, John Samuelsen was wearing a hard hat and a safety vest, repairing tracks in the bowels of the subway system. Now, in suit and tie, the new president of Transport Workers Union Local 100 has a different kind of fix-it job: uniting an organization racked by internal strife and financial troubles in order to fend off layoffs and work-rule changes promised by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's new chairman and chief executive.
The new MTA head, Jay Walder, faces a challenging repair job of his own. He began work in October, set on improving customer service and bringing New York's mass-transit system into the 21st century. But earlier this month, he acknowledged that the MTA's deteriorating finances have forced him to scale back those ambitions and instead focus on pinching every penny to help plug a $400 million gap in the agency's $12 billion operating budget.
“We have to assure the public that we're using every dollar we get as effectively as possible,” Mr. Walder says. “It would be hard to say the MTA is doing that right now.”
To increase efficiency, Mr. Walder says, he must cut jobs “significantly,” change “archaic” work rules and institute service cuts, among other fixes. However, Mr. Samuelsen intends to defend his members. And that sets up the union leader from Brooklyn and the transit chief from Queens for a high-voltage battle. The two men insist they're committed to working out a solution, but their opening salvos have been uncompromising.
“This bureaucrat ... looks at our jobs, our neighborhoods, as a line on a ledger that will balance his books,” Mr. Samuelsen told TWU members at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day forum. “I have news for Mr. Walder: If you move against our livelihoods, you will have a fight on your hands.”
Any such fight will be led by the 42-year-old son of a meat lugger and a union pension fund director, who started as a track worker in 1993. Mr. Samuelsen was initially friendly with union President Roger Toussaint, but he became persona non grata in 2005 when he challenged Mr. Toussaint's decision to sell the union's West End Avenue headquarters and organized opposition to the contract settlement that ended the transit strike that year. He earned credibility among those who were tiring of their president.

Rough-and-tumble union election
“John brings a lot of experiences to the table,” says New York State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes. “He was a rank-and-file activist, he held union office and he understands the MTA very well.”
Mr. Samuelsen's election campaign played up the notion that Local 100 had become too cozy with the MTA under Mr. Toussaint and his handpicked successor, Curtis Tate. It was a rough-and-tumble contest. Yet one of Mr. Samuelsen's first moves as president was to offer Mr. Tate a job lobbying in Albany. More than a dozen other opponents were also offered positions.
“If we don't march forward in unison,” Mr. Samuelsen explains, “we're going to be defeated by the MTA.”
He's also had to get a grip on Local 100's finances. The headquarters sale netted about $46 million, but only $26 million remains. One reason: Union officials used the proceeds to cover operating expenses when dues couldn't be collected via an automatic payroll deduction, a penalty for the illegal 2005 strike. Local 100 ran a $2 million deficit last year, Mr. Samuelsen says.
Mr. Walder, 50, who took over the MTA in October, has his own money woes. Some 700 planned layoffs were unveiled last month, affecting mostly station agents and bus operators. More could be coming. Work rules that “stand in the way of achieving the most effective outcomes” also must be modified, Mr. Walder says, declining to offer specifics. One perennially contentious idea would cut train crews from two to one.
“I always found him to be someone with strong principles, but who you can talk to,” says transit advocate Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, who knew Mr. Walder during the CEO's earlier stint as the MTA's chief financial officer. “That's my hope for the approach he'll have with the unions.”
As managing director for finance and development of Transport for London, Mr. Walder frequently butted heads with members of London's transit union. But he won praise for introducing a state-of-the-art electronic fare card that he hopes to bring to New York, and he was credited with finding $2 billion in cost-cutting measures.
He's on a similar savings quest here, because an already dismal 2009, during which ridership plummeted as the economy tanked, ended with a crippling coda in December. First, the state revealed it would cut funding to the MTA by $143 million. Then came word that the payroll tax instituted last year as part of Albany's MTA bailout could bring in $200 million less than thought. Finally, a court shot down an appeal of an arbitration ruling that awarded workers raises of more than 11% over three years, leaving the MTA with a $91 million increase in its 2010 payroll.
Damages add up
“When you put it all together, that introduced a $400 million shortfall in an incredibly short period of time,” Mr. Walder says. “When you sit in my shoes, you have to deal with that.”
Since labor constitutes 58% of the agency's 2010 expenses, or about $7 billion, layoffs would seem to be an obvious target, although a plan to overhaul the MTA's massive administrative side is also in the works.
“I don't want to threaten anyone's livelihood,” Mr. Walder says. “I'd like our work force to be well-trained and well-compensated, but I want it to be a highly productive work force, too.”
The MTA plans a further appeal of the third year's raise that was part of the arbitration ruling, a move that has inflamed tensions with the union.
Finding common ground was a hallmark of previous agency CEO Elliot Sander's approach to labor relations, Mr. Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign observes.
“The last thing we want,” he says, “is the tension and chaos that surrounded the 2005 transit strike.”

Daily News: MTA is going to okay $100M transit worker pay hikes, but will appeal increases set for third year

dkatzman — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:36:35 -0500

BY Pete Donohue
January 19 2010

A big raise for bus and subway workers is rolling down the tracks.

The MTA will agree to follow an August arbitration ruling and give workers a 4% salary boost covering last year and another 4% this year - but will fight plans for a raise next year.

The decision could mean a more than $100 million payday for workers, who have been waiting about five months for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to abide by the three-year deal awarded by a state arbitration panel, the Daily News has learned.
The MTA lost a court bid last month to have the three-year contract tossed out, but hasn't totally given up the fight.

The authority, which says the contract is too costly, will file a limited appeal seeking to stop a more than 3% raise in the third year and a provision that would lower worker contributions for health insurance coverage, transit officials told The News.

MTA Chairman Jay Walder, who started in the top job in October, couldn't be reached for comment Monday night. A spokesman declined to comment.

The contract - with raises totaling about 11.3% - will cost the MTA an additional $350 million over the life of the contract, the MTA has said.

Union officials said last night that transit workers aren't jumping for joy.

"They're going to take the money cautiously and view this as another attempt to manipulate a lawfully awarded contract," Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen said.

It was not clear when the raise - along with a hefty retroactive check - would be coming.
He predicted the MTA would lose the appeals court challenge expected to be filed this week.

The new MTA chairman needs to "stop wasting taxpayers' money in a futile pursuit to knock down" the contract, Samuelsen said.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Peter Sherwood last month rejected MTA arguments that the arbitration panel made legal and factual errors.

He found the panel gave plausible and rational justification for the contract, including that the raises followed a pattern of 4% annual increases the Bloomberg administration has given several municipal unions.

"In the current economic environment, the award ... is a rich package, but it is not unique," Sherwood wrote.

The Chief-Leader: New TWU Leader Binding Wounds and Fighting Cuts

dkatzman — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:16:41 -0500

Changing work environments can be a challenge. Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen has spent the last three weeks adjusting to working days—he was a Track Inspector working night shifts for several years prior to his election in December—and traded the dark tunnels of the subway for a roomy office in the union’s Upper West Side headquarters.

Elected as a dissident fortified by the members’ anger against then-President Roger Toussaint, Mr. Samuelsen kept a few trophies. On his desk was a model of a Northern Ireland wall with the phrase “You are now entering Free Derry,” a nod to his Irish Republicanism. He also displayed Mr. Toussaint’s presidential parking sign, which he said he would get rid of soon.

Puts Election Foe on Staff
His Take Back Our Union slate nearly swept the election, and while Mr. Samuelsen gave several of his candidates who lost their election bids—including TA Surface vice president candidate Harry Wills, who was defeated by incumbent and Toussaint loyalist Stephan Thomas—staff jobs, he pledged to work with the allies of the old administration and has given a job to his opponent in the race, Curtis Tate.
“He’ll be doing political work,” Mr. Samuelsen said during a recent interview, noting that the move will help end the union’s infighting.
Internal matters have taken up most of Mr. Samuelsen’s time during the transition, and he has vowed to cut non-essential spending. Mr. Samuelsen has put most of the division chairmen on union payroll, though some stayed on employer-based release time, which limits what kind of representation an officer can do. An officer on union payroll can participate in dues-collection drives, while those on transit release time cannot, for example.
“If you were elected as a chair you should be on the union payroll to ensure that the members of that division are going to have proper representation,” he said. “We have 15 divisions and 15 chairmen have now been offered a union payroll job and nearly every one of them has taken it. I think there might be three that have chosen not to. And that’s not for political reasons, but because they have the ability to make money, more money than the union could pay them.”
Still Waiting on Contract Hikes
But at the dawn of 2010, the union is scrambling under its new leadership to prepare to engage with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has sought layoffs and a restructuring of the workforce. In addition, New York City Transit members have yet to receive wage increases under an arbitration award retroactive to last January granting 11-percent raises over three years, as the MTA unsuccessfully challenged it in court; it has yet to announce whether it will appeal the lower court’s decision.
It is often the case when rabblerousing union dissidents get elected that they tone down their rhetoric, because the nature of being a union president requires a working relationship with management. Mr. Samuelsen long criticized Mr. Toussaint’s self-described partnership with both MTA and NYC Transit managers, but he has already met with MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder and NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast, and said that he is laying the groundwork for a good relationship with the transit heads.
Start Off Right
“I do not expect to have an antagonistic relationship with them,” Mr. Samuelsen said. “I’m not the kind of guy that’s going to get into personal insults with them back and forth, which may have happened in the past. That type of thing is not going to contribute to a sour relationship on my end. But then again, I do recognize that my job is to lead New York City Transit workers, and to protect and advance our wages and benefits. And to that extent we have diametrically opposite positions.”
Mr. Samuelsen has vowed to vigorously fight the MTA’s plan to cut 700 transit jobs. He backs a City Councilproposed plan to help the agency’s financial problems without instituting cuts, by using 10 percent of Federal stimulus money for operational costs. In addition to the layoffs, the current budget plan calls for the elimination of two subway lines, several bus routes, and free MetroCards to public school students, all of which have riled rider groups.
Mr. Samuelsen said that Local 100 will work more closely with rider advocates than it did under the Toussaint administration.
“We have a community organizer right now that’s working hand-inhand with various groups,” he said. “He’s very involved with the student groups and community groups that are rightfully opposing the stripping of MetroCards from New York City school kids. We’re prepared to fully involve ourselves with the community. Our interests are one and the same.”
Wage Delay ‘A Severe Injustice’
Notwithstanding Mr. Samuelsen’s plans to maintain good relationships with management, he noted that the MTA’s challenge to the arbitration award has left a sour taste in the mouths of Local 100 members.
“Transit workers want their wage increases,” Mr. Samuelsen said bluntly. “They’ve been dealt a severe injustice by the MTA and by New York State in the withholding of these wage increases. The wage package is far inferior to what the established citywide pattern was. The arbitrator wrote the staggering of the wage increases and the loss of retroactive pay in the arbitration award itself in order to ensure that the actual wages that transit workers earned off the arbitration award would come in the neighborhood of 8.5 percent, rather than 11. [He was referring to the cash cost of the deal being less than the actual increase in pay rates.] And even in light of that it still wasn’t good enough for the MTA and the state. So transit workers feel betrayed by their employer. It’s only served to exacerbate an alreadystrained relationship. In terms of the budget, transit workers are used to the MTA saying they have no money.”
At the last MTA board meeting, Mr. Walder along with several board members blamed labor costs for the bulk of the agency’s financial woes, with the other villain being Albany legislators who have failed to come up with viable long-term funding streams for transportation in the down-state region.
A Little Help From Her Friend
Mr. Samuelsen rolled his eyes at the suggestion from Mr. Walder and board member Nancy Shevell, a transportation industry executive best known as the girlfriend of Paul McCartney, that “archaic work rules” were crippling the agency’s ability to function efficiently.
“She wouldn’t even know where to find a copy our contract let alone point to a work rule,” he said. “She’s just another rich businesswoman who doesn’t think transit workers should be treated fairly. She should get Paul Mc- Cartney to bail out the MTA.”
Mr. Samuelsen’s challenge as president will be to address the concerns of workers in a myriad of titles. One of his campaign promises was to aid the often under-represented and smaller faction of the union, the Private Bus Lines Division. He said last week that the union is planning on organizing non-union school bus companies and vowed to fight several decertification drives in Local 100-represented companies.
While Mr. Samuelsen’s TBOU slate won that division, the incumbent vice presidents succeeded in the two divisions representing NYC Transit Bus Operators and Bus Maintainers. He vowed to stop the MTA’s efforts to consolidate MTA Bus with TA Surface and the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operation Authority.
Vision for Track Safety
As for Mr. Samuelsen’s home division— Maintenance of Way—the main issue is track safety. After two Track Workers were killed within days of each other in 2007, Local 100 pushed for a comprehensive track safety bill that would have established concrete work regulations.
The MTA strongly opposed such a bill, and when Mr. Toussaint agreed to a compromise that created a track safety task force consisting of the NYC Transit and Local 100 presidents that same year, Mr. Samuelsen decried it as a massive sell-out.
Two and half years later, Mr. Samuelsen contended it was too early to say whether track safety was going to be on the union’s political agenda, but noted that Local 100 would still aggressively push for better track safety measures through both the task force and the joint committees overseeing track safety established after the two deaths.
“We’re going to work in that framework right now,” he said. “We haven’t made a decision on whether to pursue the old safety bill as it was written. That’ll come. We have a little bit of time, at least, to do that.”

WPIX: Local 100 moves on bus safety

dkatzman — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:06:13 -0500

Daily News: Access-A-Ride workers say LIC location is infested with bedbugs

dkatzman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:08:45 -0500

Click here for Daily News story (November 19)

MTA Workers Rally: Channel 7 Eyewitness News

dkatzman — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:13:34 -0400