NYC TRANSIT AS SLUMLORD

NYC Transit As Slumlord

Transport Workers' Union Local 100 has accused supervisors at the 240th St. rail yard facility in The Bronx of violating construction codes and fair labor practices by providing themselves with new bathroom facilities while forcing line workers to share a locker room and eating area that might make a slumlord cringe.

This is not a case of envy but rather a complaint about being treated disrespectfully and even callously. The new showers and lavatories would be at worst a minor issue except that they present such a stunning contrast with the amenities afforded to ordinary transit workers.

Photographs of the locker room for Local 100 members, one of which appears on page 11 of this newspaper, offer graphic testament to the disparity: entire ceiling panels missing, holes in both the ceiling and the floor, flaking lead paint, exposed wiring. The conditions are hazardous to the workers, and should be an embarrassment to New York City Transit.

Compounding the union's frustration is that the supervisors' facilities are being spruced up by employees working out of title. Robert Davenport, the acting Local 100 chairman for the 240th St. shop, pointed out that there are 100 Structure Maintainers who last year were downgraded and placed in cleaning positions, supposedly because of insufficient repair work to occupy them. Mr. Davenport contends that fixing up the locker room would be a fine way to deploy the Structure Maintainers in their old jobs. He would have no problem with those employees upgrading the supervisors' facilities as well, if both projects were being carried out.

The need for refurbishing the locker room is not disputed. NYC Transit's Office of Systems Safety has acknowledged that repairs have to be done, and in mid-April, the head of the 240th St. facility, General Superintendent Joseph Ragusa, termed the locker room "a disaster" and estimated that there were 20 open work orders. He cited the peeling paint "which is probably lead-based, and dust particles all over the place. This is not a conducive environment to eat lunch."

Some corrective steps have been taken, but numerous problems remain. There is particular cause for concern that management is not moving faster for the simple reason that the problems are not recent developments. John P. Soucheck, NYC Transit's Director of Bus and Field Safety, noted that management findings of peeling paint go back a full decade, and the "roof above the lunch and locker rooms has been leaking for years."

The contempt in which many transit workers believe they are held by agency management was a major factor in their willingness to authorize a strike late last year and then walk out for three days, even knowing they would be subject to harsh Taylor Law penalties, along with their union. One example of that contempt that is frequently cited is the unusually high number of disciplinary cases brought against transit workers, with close to 45 percent facing charges last year.

Management would undoubtedly counter that most if not all of those charges were justifiable and that if the disciplinary count was high, the workers were to blame.

No such claim can be made to rationalize the conditions that exist in the locker room at 240th St. A management that has allowed those hazards to fester for as long as 10 years, and to stand uncorrected even as it improves facilities for its supervisors, is sending a clear and unambiguous message about what it thinks of its employees.

Until it takes strong and immediate action to prove otherwise, NYC Transit will lack credibility in virtually all labor-management disputes throughout the system.