End Part-Time Work at the CTA

City administrators and the CTA began part-time work nearly 20 years ago as a divide-
and-concur strategy. The point was to split the unity of transit workers to eventually
disband our union and privatize the CTA.

We call on the officials of our union to unite our membership and work with community
organizations and other unions to build and use our union power to force the CTA to:

• Turn over to equal full-time status all current part-time workers and put an end to
hiring new workers in any second-class position. Unite the ranks!
• Recognize current full-time workers’ years of service spent part-time (often over
three years) towards retirement. 25 years and out!

This is about safety: part-time workers are forced to work the “on-call” extra-board. We
don’t know when we are working until the night before, so we don’t know when to sleep.
This simply is not safe- not for us and not for our passengers. To do this stressful work,
we need proper rest. Driver fatigue kills- and we get blamed. Let’s make it clear that
union transit workers -not CTA officials- stand for the safety of workers and passengers.

This is about money: the executives of the CTA wish to lower our overall compensation
by forcing some of us to work under more difficult work-rules. It also forces us to work
several more years before we can retire. They say we are not “real” workers. We part-
timers say: “We wear the same uniform. We do the same work- during the hardest shifts.
Bus operators are leaders of our families and in our communities. We are real workers!”

As hundreds of new part-time workers are being hurriedly hired to meet the increase in
demand for public transit because oil companies are making billions, we are told that
there is no money; that fares must be increased and workers must accept harder working
conditions and less pay. We reject these latest “doomsday” manipulations.

CTA workers can take the lead in a campaign for full-time jobs that unite with other
union workers, immigrants and unemployed in the city. We can stand up like the
Memphis Sanitation workers in 1968 and fight for future generations. Let us start by
organizing to bring other workers to union meetings, improve our organizing skills and
learn how to run our union from the ranks up.

We are 6,500 strong. We are the Union.

Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 241 meetings are held every first Monday at
Plumbers Hall, 1430 W. Washington St. 8pm (every member is encouraged to come)