The real danger is CTA management

CHICAGOANS WATCHED the video footage in shock as a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train plowed into the end-of-the-line O'Hare Airport Blue Line stop, careening up the escalators like nothing would stop it.

But if you take even a cursory look at the grueling hours and working conditions endured by train operators, the accident isn't that shocking at all.

Fortunately, no one was killed in the accident, but some 30 people were injured around 3 a.m. on March 24 when a train traveling from downtown to O'Hare Airport didn't stop as it came to the last station. Local news played the surveillance video of the terrifying accident again and again, and the narrative was a familiar one--blame the driver, who was reportedly asleep when the accident happened.

Actually, this incident should be an indictment--not of any transit worker, but of a transit system that regularly forces workers into irregular hours that make getting good rest difficult, if not impossible.

THE DRIVER responsible for the March 24 crash worked 69 hours in the previous week, according to Robert Kelly, president of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 308. She was an "extra board" operator, which means she filled in for other workers--and didn't find out about where or when she would be working until she got a 4:30 a.m. call each day.

"It's not an easy thing to just go home and fall asleep, [when] the rest of the world is waking up," Kelly told reporters right after the crash.

The operator was fired on April 4. "They did a disciplinary reaction, not a disciplinary action," said Kelly at a later press conference, adding, "She said she dozed off. She didn't say she pulled out a pillow and went to sleep!"

CTA spokesperson Brian Steele claimed the operator had "only" worked 55 hours, and the CTA released a statement accusing the ATU of trying to "distort the truth and divert attention away from his union." In other words, it's not only the operator's fault--it's her union's, too.

But a union--one that's willing to fight for better working conditions and safety on the job--is the only thing standing in the way of more accidents like these.

A week after the crash, as the National Transportation Safety Board was investigating what happened, CTA officials were singing a different tune. They announced they would move the trip stop--a trackside device that is supposed to throw trains into emergency braking--because it wasn't far enough from the platform to stop the train from crashing on March 24.

The CTA also said it would look into schedules that bar operators from more than 12 hours of train duty in one shift--no maximum currently exists.

Transit officials would do well to talk to operators--the people who actually do the work--about what kind of rules would make their workplaces safer. But that's doubtful, considering the CTA's longstanding hostility toward the union.

THIS IS just the latest example of the consequences of the CTA trying to squeeze more out of its workforce, while it raises fares and cuts service to the bone.

The CTA used to have a conductor on each train, in addition to an operator (or motorman), but started phasing them out in 1993, when they began replacing old cars with new ones designed so that the operator could drive and look out the window on the left side of the train.

This meant that one worker had to fulfill the job of operating the train plus the old tasks of the conductor, including completing platform safety checks, opening and closing train doors and answering passenger questions. The conductors were gone by 2000.

Since then, dangerous incidents, such as a toddler in a stroller who was caught in the train doors and thrown trackside in 2009, have prompted ATU members to call for more workers on trains. But CTA officials say no.

And it's only gotten worse with Mayor Rahm Emanuel pulling the cord. Emanuel appointed Forrest Claypool to head the CTA. Claypool, who goes back to the administration of former Mayor Richard Daley, is best known by CTA bus drivers for characterizing the 15 minutes they use to safety-check their vehicles--to test the brakes, for example--as "pre-work coffee time."

But to Claypool, it's about the bottom line. Upon taking up his job as transit boss, he announced that he had some "hard decisions" ahead, and planned to look into "archaic and expensive" work rules, as well as high pension and health care costs.

Last fall, the CTA introduced a new privatized system for collecting fares called Ventra--producing a $454 million contract for Cubic Corp. and unworkable fare machines for transit riders (the ones who could afford the system, that is).

Obviously, this City Hall can't be trusted to provide safe--much less affordable--public transportation. City workers will need to come together to take on Emanuel's and CTA management's privatizing, cut-to-the-bone agenda.

In October, ATU Local 803 organized an electronic town hall, in which 1,200 participants were asked what they thought of the mayor's performance. Ninety-three percent disapproved. As Kelly told NBC Chicago:

The poll was taken mainly to show our members, but also to send a message: This is how you are perceived. Our people work [in the city], and they live here. Many of our members are African American, and live on the South Side. Their schools have been closed, they see killings [in their communities], then they have to come to work and be treated like a piece of dirt. [The poll results] are a message they want to send.