Jackie's comments on the 2001 to 2004 contract ( Hick's contract) showed she had little understanding of the contract and what was done. She sees it as a give back that we gave up the perfect attendance award. In reality we got a 4% wage increase instead of 3% for this. Do the math! The perfect attendance award was worth about $200 per year for people who qualified. The extra 1%, if you made $60,000 per year, is $600. Everyone got the extra 1% and it is now part of their base salary. So they continue to get it every year. Not a bad deal. What about funding the LTD benefit out of the pension fund? Take a look at the Pension Actuary Report and see how it is determined. Apparently Jackie never did this. The Actuary determines how much Metro needs to contribute to the fund for pensions. He then figures out how much money is needed for the LTD benefit. He adds these two numbers together and that is what Metro sends to the pension fund for the year ( its divided into 12 equal payments). The money for the LTD benefit comes from Metro. It passes through the pension fund because that was what was negotiated. A concession was made to Metro on who could participate in the EAP program. Under this agreement you had to work for Metro for at least six month to participate. If you though the drug test gave a false positive, you could grieve that.
In the 2004 to 2008 contract which I negotiated Jackie mentioned changes in the Section 124 language, like it was a bad thing. Compare the old language with the new. The new language expands the bidding rights of workers who are permanently disqualified from their positions so it is easier for them to get back to work. Is this a bad thing?
One thing Hicks and I learned from negotiating with Metro is that they often do not know what they are talking about. They made a big issue of the LTD benefit being a pension benefit. Our concern was that they continue to pay for it. The result was that they changed the name and the membership got the benefit cost free.
Jackie continues to make a big point about all the concessions Metro wanted and that is why she could not negotiate a contract. Every contract since at least 1983 Metro has come at us with the same laundry list of concessions (they must use a copying machine and change the dates). In the 2001 and 2004 contract negotiations, we got Metro to drop all the significant concessions, made some improvements and moved on. Why couldn't she do the same.
There are two reasons. First Metro management was more determined to set us back in 2008 then they were in the previous contracts. Second the union leadership told management from the start of negotiations that they would play by the rules and there would be no work actions to press the union's issues. At this point management knew that they could force the contract to arbitration where they believed that they could do better than in negotiations and if this failed they could challenge the award in court without any fear of a strike by the union.
Metro's attitude to its workers is on display in the challenge to the arbitration award. The award is clearly the worst contract the union has achieved since the Simpkin Award in 1969 when the full cost of living clause was taken from us. ( We got it back in 1972 through negotiations and the threat of a strike.) The award froze our wages for a year which has not happened since 1992, and it eliminated retiree health insurance for new employees which will save Metro over $1 billion as current emplyees and retirees die off. In addition it introduced co-payments for the HMO's which had never existed before. Despite these give backs, Metro believes they can push us even further back.
We are now at a crossroad. The laws governing the arbitraton process at WMATA have been changed to tilt the process more in the bosses' favor. We are in a weaker position than we have been since the right to strike was negotiated away in 1955. At this point we have neither binding arbitration or the right to strike. If we acept the status quo this job will soon not be worth having. Many of us are afraid of the consequences of fighting back. We still have hope that things will work themselves out. They might, but we should prepare ourselves for battle. Preparing for battle means building an alliance with the riding public whom we serve everyday. It means uniting with other unions who are facing the same difficulties we are. It means gaining the support of our families and friends.
