Chicago Transit Union Tops Ram Through Sellout Contract

“Second Chance” Program: Racist, Anti-Union

In February, the bureaucrats who run Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Locals 241 (bus) and 308 (rail), acting in the service of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Democratic Party administration, forced a rotten contract on transit workers. For years, the arrogant Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bosses have been taking the knife to union benefits and seniority rights while imposing widespread, ever-harsher discipline and more miserable work schedules. The new transit pact follows this pattern and mirrors attacks on public workers nationwide: nominal pay raises will be wiped out by higher health care costs to come. But the bad news does not stop there. The contract further enshrines the union-busting “Second Chance” program, which exploits ex-convicts as virtual slave labor.

Under this so-called “apprentice” program, introduced in late 2007 with the complicity of the ATU tops, the CTA has created a layer of hundreds of miserably paid, overwhelmingly black workers who are union members in name only; they pay dues and retiree health care contributions, but receive no union benefits or real protections. They are at the complete mercy of the CTA bosses; even the slightest perceived infraction is considered grounds for firing. Made to take on long, grueling shifts, these workers clean buses and trains for less than half of what full-time permanent union servicers are paid to do the same work.

Since its inception, there has been widespread opposition to “Second Chance” within the ATU. Workers Vanguard was told that at meetings of both locals last year, union members voted overwhelmingly against the program’s renewal. Many were in solidarity with these workers and support them getting equal pay and full rights. However, other union members opposing “Second Chance” have bought the bosses’ lie, echoed by the ATU misleaders, that these former prisoners are to blame for their second-class status. As we wrote during the early days of the program (WV No. 923, 24 October 2008): “It is crucial for the ATU to take up the defense of the apprentices. Workers must demand that they receive full union wages, benefits, training, protections and rights on the job and in the union. Equal pay for equal work! No second-class union membership!”

In Chicago, known as “Segregation City,” trigger-happy cops roam the ghettos and barrios, subjecting everyone from teenage students to black bus drivers to a reign of terror. Many of the city’s black youth have been swept up into prison hellholes under the racist “war on drugs.” Initiated under Republican Richard Nixon, this is in reality a war on black people that was for years pushed by black Democrats like Bobby Rush and Jesse Jackson. And it is Rush and other black Dems who champion “Second Chance” as giving a break to the very people they helped put behind bars! Once a prisoner, one is branded for life: stripped of voting and other rights; denied employment, housing and basic services; barred even from qualifying for a commercial driver’s license. It is in the interest of the labor movement, in the city and nationally, to fight for the full restoration of rights for ex-convicts.

The CTA “Second Chance” program is one of the largest programs of its kind in the country, having quadrupled in size under Emanuel. It is the product of the “re-entry movement,” a cabal of religious conservatives and Democratic Party politicians like Barack Obama, Bobby Rush and his fellow Chicago-based Congressman Danny Davis. They claim that such programs help people with a criminal record find employment, but that is pure deception. Few learn new skills or get a permanent CTA job, and some 90 percent are fired within a few years. With the new union contract, the ATU tops have criminally reinforced the pariah status of ex-convicts on the job.

We warned in our 2008 article: “All transit workers stand to lose, as the program is a dagger aimed at the entire union.” CTA management has long sought to set up pools of cheap labor, as seen in the proliferation of low-paid, part-time jobs with no pension benefits among drivers, motormen and customer service attendants. Many bus drivers are forced to work 12-14 hour split shifts with unpaid hours in the middle of their day.

Granted a free hand to bully the “Second Chance” workers, the transit bosses have been cracking the disciplinary whip on all union members. Two black bus drivers, Leonard Price and Michael Reeves, Jr., are currently fighting to get their jobs back after the CTA fired them for defending themselves. Price faced down a provocative racist on his bus, and Reeves, a man wielding a knife. Both ATU locals must demand: Reinstate Price and Reeves with no loss in pay or seniority!

Before the contract vote, for which only about half the membership turned out, transit workers had been working without a contract for over two years. Many wanted to make a fight of it. A golden opportunity presented itself when the previous contract expired at the end of 2015. Emanuel was in political crisis after he was exposed for trying to cover up video of a cop gunning down black youth Laquan McDonald. Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members had just voted by a large margin to strike. Given the hated mayor’s all-sided attacks on poor and working people, a strike by teachers and transit workers would have widely resonated among these sections of the population, posing the real possibility of driving Emanuel out through labor action.

The point was not to replace the strutting bully Emanuel with some other Democratic Party false “friend of labor.” Rather, it was to open the door for the multiracial working class to engage in wider struggle, not only in its own interest but also on behalf of the oppressed. As we stated at the time: “Our purpose is to fight to translate the mounting anger and discontent into a conscious understanding that the working class needs its own party—not an electoral vehicle vying to be the administrators of the capitalist state and its cops, courts and jails—but a party that would play a leading role in a broad fight against the ravages of capitalism” (“We Need a Multiracial Workers Party!” WV No. 1081, 15 January 2016).

The ATU and CTU union tops worked overtime to defuse the situation and let the crisis pass. As part of shoring up the image of Emanuel in the middle of the crisis, Davis and Rush for their part trotted out to a bus garage for a photo op with the mayor, pushing for renewal of the “Second Chance” program. The union misleaders’ refusal to strike against Emanuel when he was on the ropes went a long way toward resuscitating his credibility to the racist rulers as their man for the job.

The ATU locals have the social power to turn the Loop into a parking lot and upend business as usual. But the pro-capitalist ATU officials have long refused to wield the strike weapon. The union tops share the political program of City Hall—to maintain “labor peace” and not upset the capitalist applecart—based on the lie that the ruling class and the toiling masses have common interests. The Democrats, who have long run the city, posture as “friends” of labor and the oppressed, only to slash jobs, attack unions, gut public services and deploy cops to terrorize black and Latino neighborhoods.

We learned last year that, with sentiment for a strike running high, angry Local 308 members sought to force a strike authorization vote. Union officials responded by organizing a June “straw poll,” cynically orchestrated to let off steam. In that poll, Local 308 members voted 98 percent in favor of strike action. This desire was echoed by workers in Local 241. But in the end, with the carrot of back pay and the stick that “we’ll do worse in arbitration,” Local 308 president Ken Franklin and Local 241 president Keith Hill pushed through contract ratification.

Behind the scenes, the ATU bureaucrats had already started the process of binding arbitration, a trap designed to head off strikes and leave workers with no say in the contract. While Franklin postured as more militant by talking “strike,” his counterpart Hill was busy penning legal memos worthy of the CTA law department to explain why an ATU strike would be “illegal,” citing the union’s no-strike arbitration clause. In fact, the 1985 Illinois Labor Relations Act does not ban transit strikes unless the union agrees to enter binding arbitration. It is a damning indictment of the ATU tops that contract after contract, including the latest, has contained an arbitration clause.

Hill and his ilk hide behind anti-labor laws as an excuse to just roll over. Of course, taking on the capitalist state, with its cops and courts, is a serious matter, but what the bosses can actually get away with depends on the class struggle. Historically, the industrial unions in the U.S. were forged through class battles that defied capitalist legality.

What is urgently needed is a fight for a class-struggle leadership of the unions, one based on complete independence from the bosses and their Democratic Party political operatives. The unions must be rebuilt as battalions of the multiracial working class against the bosses, including by inscribing on labor’s banner the call for the emancipation of black people and all the oppressed. A new, militant leadership would fight for jobs for all at good union wages and for industrial unionism—e.g., one union for all Chicago transit workers, as opposed to the current divisions between rail and bus locals and 12 different craft unions. Crucially, such a leadership would have as its perspective the building of a workers party that fights for a workers government.