Not Our Mess! No OT for NATO.

Our employer has been on a steady attack against us, our working conditions and the people who depend on our hard work: our loved ones and our passengers. They laid off 1100 of us while dangerously increasing our workloads and forcing our passengers to wait longer for more and more packed trains and buses. Our employer has falsely attacked our character publicly. They deliberately attempt to aim the legitimate anger of passengers at us. This has led to many incidents of violence against us. We are continually threatened with intensified disciplinary action and many of us have been unjustly fired. Management systematically refuses to allow time off while we suffer stress and injury. We are treated like criminals just for getting a common cold! Now they may have gone too far even in their own interests. They may not have enough manpower to run the Chicago public transit system during the NATO summit. To be clear: we did not ask for this summit to come to our city. We did not decide to close our streets and mess up our communitys transportation. Its their mess and they want us to clean it up. They are asking us to work overtime to solve the short-staff problems they created intentionally. They do this at the exact time they hold a jobs fair to replace us once we do the overtime! We are currently poorly organized. We are not yet united with each other or our communities. The call by several groups of workers to decline to do overtime from May 18-21 may only be partly successful. However, we heartily join this effort nonetheless. We have to take a stand. In the attempt, we may relearn how powerful we are and begin to regain some of the dignity taken from us. We call on our coworkers to do the following from May 18-21, 2012: 1. Work only the runs you are required to do. Do not sign the extra-workbook. Do not offer to do any extra work or volunteer to stay beyond your shift. Respectfully decline any such requests. If you are off for the day, do not go to work and do not answer any workplace phone calls to your personal telephone. 2. While at work, please put our passengers safety above everything else. Carefully follow our employers written Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Follow street instruction, but do not go out of your way to solve their mess.

Chicago Transit Workers Council