May 13, 2014

This last week the General Committee of Adjustment (GCA) just finished launching its new web and social media sites. It was unveiled to a meeting of all the union officers over the Mother’s Day Weekend. This undertaking has been admittedly long overdue and the committee hopes that this new way to communicate with the membership will go a long way to fulfill the promise of greater transparency to the work being performed at union headquarters.

This week the GCA will have its hands full with contract negotiations with the MTA on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. As was reported in a previous bulletin, negotiation began slowing down over the issue of discipline and work rules. Discipline was the number one issue expressed by the membership at every Local during the meetings held in February, and the GCA has promised significant changes to discipline for the members in this contract. The last couple sessions since then have been spent clarifying positions and arguments, and the SMART team is cautiously optimistic that meaningful progress will be made on this issue in the coming negotiating sessions.

Last week the ATU finalized a four year contract with the LACMTA worth over $36 Million. You can read the article in the LA Times here.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-union-contract-mta-raise-20140506-story.html

The General Committee, with help from SMART International Representative Victor Baffoni, is currently reviewing the contract struck by the ATU.