Fate Rides With Contract

Transit Apprentices Caught in Logjam

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

When Emmanuel Belizaire, Sean Walker and Wendell Romain joined the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's apprenticeship program in 1999 and 2000, they imagined a bright and stable future for themselves doing construction work for one of New York's most high-profile organizations.

ROGER TOUSSAINT: Apprentice plans stalled.

Instead, more than six years into their training and after more than a year at their latest assignment - cleaning up trash in New York City Transit's subway stations - these three young men from the Caribbean have learned that opportunities aren't always what they seem. They feel stuck in limbo, prisoners of the bitter battle over their union's contract.

'Not What They Promised'

"I am grateful for the job itself, but it's not what we were originally promised," said Mr. Belizaire, a 25-year-old who immigrated to Brooklyn from Haiti with his family when he was an adolescent. "I feel that we were misguided."

The three young men share more than a common heritage - they all grew up in an area of Brooklyn that's heavily populated with transit workers, mostly from the Caribbean. They attended the same high school - George Wingate on Kingston Ave. - and were given encouragement by school officials to join the MTA construction apprenticeship program when they displayed an early aptitude for construction.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang LOOKING FOR A WAY OUT: Emmanuel Belizaire (left), a Structure Maintainer with New York City Transit, joined the agency in 1999 through an apprenticeship program that promised to teach him carpentry and construction skills during a three-year training period. Instead, Mr. Belizaire and 19 other young workers were reassigned as Station Cleaners in 2005. Gregory McDonald, vice chairman of the Structure Division for Transport Workers' Union Local 100 has been working with the group in an effort to get them back on their preferred jobs.

They all gave up alternate plans in exchange for what they thought was a chance to develop and perfect building skills that would lead them up the MTA pay scale.

Put Aside College

"I took up pre-engineering in high school and was training to read computerassisted drawings - blueprints, for example, from an architect," said Mr. Walker, 25, who was born in Jamaica. "I was thinking about going into the Navy as a way to get more schooling, but then this chance came and I thought, 'Okay, cool.'''

Mr. Belizaire put aside plans to attend Alfred College upstate and joined the program in 1999, just after it was announced by the then-President of Transport Workers' Union Local 100, Willie James.

For one year, Mr. Belizaire said, everything functioned as promised. He was assigned to a different NYC Transit shop or yard every few months and worked under the close supervision of senior Structure Maintainers.

Became a Recruiter

He felt it was such a successful program that he returned to Wingate High School at the request of its Guidance Counselors and talked about his work to other future apprentices, including Mr. Walker and Mr. Romain, who immigrated from Trinidad as a teenager. They both decided to follow their friend into the MTA.

"I was real excited to be making my own money, and to be working for such a big company - I thought it would open a lot of doors for me," said Mr. Walker. "I figured you'd go into a bank and they'd look at you a little bit different when they learned you worked for the Transit Authority, because that's a big name to have behind you."

But he and Mr. Romain didn't get the same training as Mr. Belizaire. They were assigned to "rough carpentry" work, essentially moving equipment for NYC Transit and throwing up barricades and simple structures. They weren't given rotating assignments to different shops or connected to a mentor. And Mr. Belizaire, after a fulfilling first year, found himself in the same situation.

In July 2005, the three young men, along with 17 other MTA trade apprentices and more than 100 full-time senior Structure Maintainers, were told there was no repair work available for them to do in the subway system. They were assigned to work as Station Cleaners.

Mr. Belizaire, Mr. Walker and Mr. Romain, who had just become permanent employees after a protracted battle between their union and NYC Transit over how apprentices should come on to the job, were assigned the least desirable overnight shifts. The new schedule forced Mr. Belizaire and Mr. Walker to drop the undergraduate classes they were taking at New York City Technical College and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

NYC Transit's Director of Human Resources, Patrick Smith, acknowledged that the Structure Maintainer apprenticeship program hit a rough patch in 2000, when newly elected Roger Toussaint took over Local 100.

Became Contract Issue

Mr. Toussaint didn't have the same vision for the program as his predecessor. He wanted details nailed down about how the young workers would be transitioned into permanent jobs, and sought assurances that NYC Transit wouldn't attempt to create a lower-paid work force using the apprentices. The issue became part of negotiations during the 2002 contract discussions.

Even after it was collectively agreed upon, the union and NYC Transit for three years went back and forth in arbitration over how to best implement the program and still maintain the civil service requirements that mandate new hires pass entrance exams for titled positions.

"Some things fell through the cracks, because there wasn't the continuity that some apprentices should have gotten," said Mr. Smith. "More could have been done, but I myself have gone out and tried to get these apprentices rotated into key areas. I don't believe they missed much in the way of training, but they felt that because others got a chance to rotate into different shops, they should have the same thing."

UFT Involved

Administrators at the high schools participating in the program were unavailable for comment. United Federation of Teachers' Vice President for Vocational, Career and Technical Education Michael Mulgrew said, "We understand there is a problem and we will do everything in our power to make this program work." Mr. Mulgrew is scheduled to meet with NYC Transit officials in the next few weeks. UFT President Randi Weingarten said contract-related mistrust and bitterness from Local 100 and NYC Transit derailed earlier attempts to resolve problems.

Most of the group of approximately 20 Structure Maintainer apprentices who came on between 1999 and 2003 were reassigned as Cleaners, Mr. Smith confirmed. He said it was a temporary situation that arose from a budget shortfall, and that he was urging NYC Transit supervisors to find the excessed employees more meaningful tasks.

"We have been able to bring back many workers as new needs have opened up, so we are hopeful that these young workers will eventually get back to do Structure Maintainer jobs," he said. "I'm pushing for them and am probably their strongest advocate - there is hope. They should not give up."

NYC Transit fought for the establishment of an apprentice program for more than 20 years as a way to build a pool of skilled labor.

Classes Continue

Mr. Smith said the agency remained committed to the core values of the apprenticeship program, and had opened a second track for older MTA employees who saw it as a possible route into some of the higher-paid positions that require specific trade skills.

The MTA in March 2006 started another apprenticeship class for Signal Maintainers. Thirteen students participated. Another class of approximately 20 students will begin Sept. 5.

The MTA will only hold classes for titles that it needs, Mr. Smith said, so no Structure Maintainers will be in the next group. The agency wants to develop workers for the electrical department.

The demand for certain skills fluctuates within the agency, Mr. Smith noted. Right now, with the MTA looking to replace glass panels in its subway cars with graffiti-resistant Mylar, Car Inspectors are in high demand.

Mr. Smith has pressured NYC Transit to take some of the Structure Maintainers currently cleaning stations and let them install the new windows.

DCAS Opposed

"They aren't trained for that specifically, but they certainly could learn how to do it, and it would be more in line with their interests, I'm sure," he commented.

But the Department of Citywide Administrative Services has insisted that only workers who passed the entrance exam and are properly vetted as Car Inspectors do any kind of work associated with that title. Mr. Toussaint successfully bargained a clause into the Dec. 15, 2005 contract that said both sides had to meet within 30 days of ratification to discuss ways to bring all the excessed Structure Maintainers back into title work. That contract is now stalled in arbitration, however, and it's unclear whether such a clause would be part of any final agreement.

Mr. Belizaire, Mr. Walker and Mr. Romain said they were angry with the union and the MTA.

"It's a curveball that's been thrown at us, completely upending our futures," said Mr. Belizaire.

Stands Up for Safety

The three young men also said they had problems adapting to life as Station Cleaners. They are well-trained in workplace safety regulations, and were appalled to hear supervisors refuse to let Station Agents wear dust masks when sweeping up dirty platforms.

"I always demand a mask, and if they tell me to do something without the proper safety equipment, I say no," said Mr. Walker. "Then they'll transfer you somewhere else, because most of the workers, they don't know what they should be asking for, and the supervisors don't want you around if you do."

All of them said they wouldn't have signed on for the MTA program had they known they would lose out on training and wind up working as Station Cleaners.

"They have to feel let down, and we fight for them - we have been fighting for them from day one," said Mr. Smith, referring to the three men he ushered into the MTA program. "These young people just happen to be in the middle of NYC Transit and the union, and it's terrible to be a pawn in the middle, but that's what has wound up happening."