Chicago Transit

Down With Racist, Anti-Union “Ex-Offender Apprentice” Scheme!

CHICAGO—Over the past year, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) together with Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Democratic Party machine has rolled out an “Ex-Offender Apprentice Program.” Under this program, ex-convicts are hired at a paltry $9.50 an hour without benefits to fill previously eliminated Servicer positions (workers who service and clean vehicles) that paid more than $20 an hour plus benefits. While Boss Daley and the CTA will always seek out cheap sources of labor as a battering ram against the union, the leaders of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Locals 241 (bus) and 308 (rail) outrageously support this cruel scheme. The ATU tops cut a deal with the transit bosses to back this anti-union endeavor in return for the opportunity to set up a low-wage “ghetto” within the union, where the “apprentices” pay full dues but have no real union protection or rights!

Except for one press release, there has been a virtual media blackout of this program. As a result, many transit workers, especially among bus drivers, are not even aware of this betrayal. Among those who are, there has been growing sympathy for the overwhelmingly black “apprentices” who work long hours in some of the hardest, dirtiest jobs with little training and virtually no rights while segregated from the rest of the workforce. 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!

All transit workers stand to lose, as the program is a dagger aimed at the entire union. Many apprentices work mandatory ten-hour shifts with no overtime pay. Already the CTA is champing at the bit to extend this to the ATU workforce as a whole. With the passage of the Second Chance Act in Congress last spring giving a boost to such ex-offender “job training” programs, municipal unions across the country may soon face similar divide-and-conquer schemes, which undermine union standards.

The Second Chance Act is a product of the “re-entry movement,” a coalition encompassing the Congressional Black Caucus, liberal Democrats and religious conservatives who see an opportunity to expand their reactionary “faith-based” initiatives. A number of Democratic Party politicians, including Barack Obama and Chicago-based black Congressman Danny Davis, were sponsors of this legislation.

As with millions of other black, Latino and poor people, many of the ex-convict “apprentices” now hired by the CTA were earlier swept into prison as a part of the racist “war on drugs.” From the outset, black Democrats like Jesse Jackson were in the vanguard of this reactionary crusade, which led to the skyrocketing prison population. Activists for black rights now refer to the “war on drugs” as the “new Jim Crow.” In Chicago, where black people are 35 percent of the population, over 90 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug crimes are black!

In this racist system there is nothing “ex” about being an “ex-convict.” Once out of prison, they begin a second sentence, marked for life with the scarlet letter of a criminal conviction, barely able to eke out an existence. Across the country, ex-felons are barred from employment and denied voting rights. In Illinois, a “Certificate of Good Conduct” is virtually required of ex-felons for a whole range of jobs from barber to interior designer. We call for the decriminalization of drugs as a part of our opposition to all laws against “crimes without victims” and for the full restoration of rights to ex-convicts.

The CTA program is a harbinger of the kind of racist, union-busting attacks that the rulers have in store for the entire working class under the pretext of “concern” for former prisoners. Employed for only nine months with no guarantee of further work, the apprentices can be fired immediately for any infraction including a single late arrival to work. The CTA refuses to train them in transferable skills necessary to do the job, from obtaining a commercial driver’s license to using computers. Additionally, they cannot enter programs available to the rest of the servicers to learn mechanics’ skills that can help them advance in the industry. Instead, the company, backed by the ATU tops, has created semi-supervisory positions for full union members to assist management in overseeing its modern-day version of chain-gang labor. Down with this “straw boss” position!

There must be a political struggle to oust the pro-capitalist ATU bureaucrats, who have aided and abetted the bosses’ union-busting program. Transit workers told Workers Vanguard that when the plan was introduced to bus maintenance this summer union reps toured the locations with management to help sell the rotten deal to the members. American socialist Daniel De Leon captured the treachery of the U.S. labor officialdom more than a century ago, popularizing the description of them as “labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.” Today, some union leaders are acting more like low-wage labor contractors than even labor lieutenants for the bosses.

Under the watch of the current ATU leadership and their predecessors, Chicago transit workers have been subjected to a slicing and dicing of the workforce, including the introduction of part-time work and wage tiers, two separate ATU locals and multiple craft unions. Every fissure allows the bosses to drive a wedge between workers so they can roll back the wages and conditions of all union members.

The union misleaders’ entire strategy rests on a program of class collaboration, principally through herding votes for the capitalist Democratic Party. It was Democratic president Bill Clinton who in the 1990s greatly expanded union-busting “workfare” schemes, which drafted the ghetto and barrio poor on a large scale to work as slave labor in formerly unionized municipal jobs. Today in stark contrast to mobilizing the power of the union to defend the membership against attacks and givebacks, the ATU bureaucrats are churning out thousands of “ATU Supports Obama” buttons.

This goes hand in hand with their established practice of voluntarily submitting the union to binding arbitration, which is designed to head off strikes, whenever a contract is up. They peddle the lie that the ruling class and the working class have common interests.

The way forward in the face of schemes to divide and weaken the union is to unite behind a program of class struggle in opposition to the Democratic Party and all other parties and agencies of the class enemy. The labor tops treat the membership as little more than a dues base, as is graphically shown in the case of these apprentices. All workers who pay dues must have full union protection and rights! Fight for one industrial union of all transit workers!

As is clear in the case of this racist union-busting scheme, union rights and black rights will either march forward together or fall back separately. One of the most powerful unions in the city, the heavily black and Latino ATU is in a strategic position to take the lead. What is required is a fight for jobs for all—for a shorter workweek at no loss in pay—and full cost-of-living escalator clauses in union contracts. We need a class-struggle fight for a massive program of public works at union wages—for quality, integrated housing and schools; for massive reconstruction of roads, bridges and tunnels; for free, quality transit services; for everything we need for a decent life. Out of these struggles, a multiracial revolutionary workers party will be built that leads all the exploited and oppressed in the fight for workers power. Those who labor must rule!