All News

Questions & Answers on the Contract

Answers to the most frequently asked questions about the new TWU Local 100 contract are available at the link below.

Questions & Answers On Our Contract

Answers to the most frequently asked questions about the new TWU Local 100 contract

Also available: a PDF for printing.

Executive Board Endorses Tentative Contract

A Message from TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen

The Local 100 Executive Board has overwhelmingly (37-6) endorsed the union's tentative agreement with the MTA covering TA, MABSTOA and MTA Bus Members. We met earlier today at the union hall and had a substantive discussion on the contract terms. Ratification ballots will be going out in the mail as soon as possible, and will include full details on all contractual and departmental gains.

The agreement includes tremendous economic value in terms of wages that easily outstrips inflation, and includes other gains that will boost our earning power well beyond the percentage increases. We have protected our health benefits with no added out of pocket costs, and we won substantial new money for our dental plan that will, among other things, extend coverage to our dependents to age 26. As important, this is a concession-free contract, a major accomplishment in this age of public sector bargaining.

I urge you to vote YES on this contract so that we can all begin enjoying its many benefits.

Click here to see our flyer summarizing the contract provisions.

TWU Founder Mike Quill with Dr. King and former Local 100 President Matty Guinan at our 1961 Convention

TWU Local 100 Honors Dr. King

America's workers had no better friend and supporter than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis while speaking out against racism and injustice against the City's sanitation workers during the famous "I Am a Man" strike. TWU leaders of the 50's and 60's had a close friendship with Dr. King, who delivered the keynote speech at the TWU International Convention in New York in 1961.

Local 100 leaders spent 2017's three-day MLK weekend honoring his legacy by fighting for better wages and better conditions for the workforce that moves more than 8 million New Yorkers every day. We came away with a solid contract that protects our health benefits and wages and other economic benefits that keep us ahead of inflation. All without any givebacks.

So as we all enjoy the promise of improved benefits and economics for ourselves and our families in the next two years, let us reflect for a moment on the great legacy of struggle that has made our current fights possible.

John Samuelsen

President, TWU Local 100

Summer Childcare Vouchers Now Open to Union Members

Summer and Fall childcare slots are now available to union members employed by NYCT and MaBSTOA. Click here for program details and requirements. Applications are considered on a first come, first served basis. Members must be in good standing to apply.

TWU Working Women Bring Toys to Homeless Families

Content from TWU Working Women Bring Toys to Homeless Families

This holiday season was marked by hope and cheer brought to homeless families by our own Working Women's Committee. In December, committee members brought toys to families from shelters in Brownsville, and also distributed gifts to needy families within the transit system. We were joined in Brownsville by Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, a great friend to our union.

This holiday season was marked by hope and cheer brought to homeless families by our own Working Women's Committee. In December, committee members brought toys to families from shelters in Brownsville, and also distributed gifts to needy families within the transit system. We were joined in Brownsville by Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, a great friend to our union. Enjoy the show

A New Year’s Greeting from Local 100 President John Samuelsen

New Year’s Eve is always a big night for transit workers. We bring hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to Times Square for the biggest New Year’s celebration in the world. And then when it’s all over, we bring them back home safe and sound to get ready for 2017.

New Year’s Eve has also provided some of the most important moments in TWU history. From the 1940’s until the early 1980’s, the Local 100 contract traditionally expired at midnight on New Year’s Eve. New York will never forget the New Year in 1966 when transit workers hit the picket lines in the first city-wide bus and subway strike in New York City history.

We are just two weeks away from the expiration of our current agreement on January 15, 2017 and just one week away from our Mass Membership Meeting on Saturday January 7, 2017 at the Madison Square Garden Theater. At our mass rally outside 2 Broadway on Nov. 15th, thousands of transit workers served notice on the MTA that we are ready to do whatever is necessary to win a fair contract. Our Contract with the MTA Expires on January 15, 2017.

The level of membership engagement in this contract campaign has been outstanding beginning with our big rally at 2 Broadway on November 15, 2016 and again with our action at the MTA Board meeting on Dec. 14, 2016. Let’s keep the energy building as we push toward January 15.

If you are working on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, the City, the MTA and your union owe you a great debt of gratitude. If you are lucky enough to have off, enjoy this time with your family and friends.

On behalf of the Local 100 leadership team, I wish the entire Local 100 family in all our Divisions across the City, Westchester, Jersey City, Boston, Chicago and Washington, DC a Happy New Year.

John Samuelsen,
President
TWU Local 100

Contract Fight Update at Mass Membership Meeting in Madison Square Garden on January 7 | TWU Local 100

At our mass rally outside 2 Broadway on Nov. 15th, thousands of transit workers served notice on the MTA that we are ready to do whatever is necessary to win a fair contract. Our Contract with the MTA Expires on January 15, 2017.

MTA Presents Departmental Demands

The MTA has presented its Departmental demands in meetings with the TWU Local 100 negotiating committees in each department.

The MTA’s still has not presented main table proposals. We can expect them shortly after the New Year.

As to management’s Departmental demands, there are definitely some unifying themes.

The MTA wants to reduce contractual payments for reporting time, wash-up time, travel time.
They want to limit our members’ control over their work schedules. They are attempting to do this through limiting the number of picks, eliminating shape-up, eliminating weekly bids, extending or creating lock-ins, and reducing the penalties they would have to pay for changing someone’s tour or hours on short notice.
There are MTA demands to broad-band our work, such as having Cleaners do some light maintenance work.

Overall, the MTA demands seek to reduce our income and negatively impact our flexibility to select jobs and schedules that reflect the needs of our families.

The union is actively fighting against these demands, and we fully expect to beat them back.

As the negotiations move forward further updates will be sent.

Revamped Union Apprenticeship Program Up and Running

TWU Local 100 has re-invigorated our apprenticeship program, designed to give career advancement opportunities to our lowest-paid titles – traffic checker and CTA. In a ribbon cutting at the Apex Technical School on December 5th, President Samuelsen joined top officers, TUF Director Charles Jenkins, and the President of Apex to announce that 20 newly minted students – all union members – are moving up the career ladder.

Selected from a wide pool of applicants, these men and women will be paid their transit salaries as they progress through a six month course at Apex to learn the trades of masonry, carpentry and plumbing. After graduation, they will enter a three-year apprenticeship program within Maintenance of Way, giving them the opportunity to enjoy better earnings and a better life.

The new “Upward Advancement Program” represents a fulfillment of an earlier promise to create an internal career ladder that requires budgeted jobs, for the first time ever. The original program was sidelined by Jay Walder during the MTA financial cuts in 2010, and until now there was not a contractual requirement for permanent budgeted jobs in our apprenticeship program. The next Upward Advancement Program will be selected next year. The application period will announced. For more information please inquire at the Training and Upgrading Fund (TUF) at 718-780-8700.

Video: TWU Contract Fight Demonstration at MTA Board

TWU takes action at the MTA Board Meeting

With one month go to before contract expiration, TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen addresses the MTA Board of Directors. Also speaking are rank and file transit workers, and Harry Lombardo, President of the TWU of America.

Dramatic Showing at MTA Board Meeting Underscores Union’s Demand for “Fair and Equitable” Wage Increases

Content from MTA Board Meeting Action

TWU Local 100 brought its campaign for a fair contract in dramatic fashion to the MTA’s December Board meeting today (Dec. 14, 2016). With a little more than a month left before expiration of the union’s contracts for TA/OA and MTA Bus members, the Local’s top leadership and more than 250 rank-and-file members packed the MTA Board’s meeting room to capacity, with an even larger overflow crowd in the lobby of MTA headquarters at 2 Broadway.

Many members carried intense poster sized images of co-workers who were beaten and slashed on the job into the Board meeting and held them high so Board members would see the kind of daily pressures and dangers facing transit workers. Members also produced a TWU version of the Union Square Subway Therapy Wall (where New Yorkers stuck thousands of post-its to express their post election feelings) by taping letter-sized “post-its” on the lobby wall at 2 Broadway. The “post-its” contract demands included messages like, COLA’s Don’t Cut It, Don’t Touch My Health Benefits, Improve Our Longevity, and many more.

The Local 100 action was bolstered by a powerful show of national TWU solidarity, as TWU International President Harry Lombardo, the entire International Transit Division staff, and numerous officers from other TWU Locals in the the tri-state region stood side-by-side with Local 100 President John Samuelsen, Secretary Treasurer Earl Phillips, Recording Secretary LaTonya Crisp-Sauray, Vice Presidents Tony Utano, Pete Rosconi, JP Patafio, Kia Phua, Nelson Rivera and Richard Davis, and numerous Division officers.