TWU: Fund For Child-Care In Need of Fixing

Transport Workers Union Local 100 acknowledged last week that its Child Care Fund had suffered financial set-backs and that the union was working to fix them in addition to clarifying eligibility rules.

The Chief-Leader/Alana Marcu WANTS THE LIST: Transport Workers Union Local 100 Line Equipment and Signal Division Recording Secretary John Chiarello restated his demand that the union's Child Care Fund release the names of those it was giving reimbursements after Local 100 officials admitted that improper accounting led to an overdrawing of its resources.

In a memo posted on the union's Web site the evening of Feb. 11, Local 100 stated that low enrollment in the first two years of the fund's existence, 2002-04, caused trustees to liberalize eligibility rules, including letting a family enroll more than one child in the program and reimbursing families at a rate of 50 percent.

'Fund Was Overdrawn'

"This was intended as a temporary measure under the circumstances," the memo stated.

But, the statement added, the review process for readjusting the levels of reimbursements was not done in a "timely manner, resulting in the fund overdrawing on its resources."

Those admissions were made after Local 100 members and officers publicly complained to this newspaper - whose Web site published a story on the matter that evening - that there were New York City Transit workers in at least two divisions who should have been eligible but were denied access to the benefits.

"This is now being resolved," the memo said. "The original one-child rule is back in place, the reimbursement rate is now 25 percent and the number of participants is being limited to as many as the fund can cover, with slots assigned on a seniority and rotating basis."

Began With '02 Pact

In the 2002 contract, Local 100 gave up a 0.5-percent wage increase in exchange for the establishment of the Child Care Fund. The fund reimburses a percentage of members' costs for day care, after-school programs and summer camps to those who have been approved.

Local 100 Line Equipment and Signal Recording Secretary John Chiarello, one of the officials who asked for answers about the Child Care Fund, responded to the memo by demanding that Local 100 President Roger Toussaint provide a list of which members have been receiving the benefits and clarification on what kind of oversight the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which contributes $200,000 a month to the fund under the current wage pact, has over the union's administration of the fund.

"In other words, they just ran the fund as they felt anyway they wanted," he said. "They really neglected their fiduciary responsibility. I think the International [TWU] should get involved in this."