BOSTON — Union workers operating the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s commuter rail operator for its contract operator, Keolis, are prepared to strike over wages and other conditions, the president of one union told the MBTA’s board on Thursday.
“We don’t want to strike, but we will when we are legally able to,” Transportation Workers Union Local 2054 President Ed Flaherty told the board. The union said in a press release that it has been working for 238 days without a contract, that its members are among the few workers in Massachusetts without sick time, and that pay for first-year workers is so low that they are eligible for food stamps and Section 8 public housing vouchers. While a strike is difficult under the Railway Labor Act, the National Mediation Board can grant “self help status” and allow a strike without legal penalties after a series of mediation efforts and 30-day cooling-off periods, the union said.
The Boston Herald reports that Flaherty said that while the two sides continue to negotiate in good faith, the current disparity between MBTA workers for his union and those at Amtrak in a similar position is 12%, and by 2028 it will be more than 50%, and the story is the same for those employed by similar systems in New York.
MBTA CEO Phillip Eng said at the meeting that he understood that what the union sought is “being discussed right now, and robustly, back and forth,” according to the Herald.
A Keolis representative told WBTS-TV that the union received annual raises between 2017 and 2022, with the last effective June 15, 2022, and that the TWU is one of 14 unions representing nearly 2,500 Keolis workers.
“We are currently negotiating in good faith with each collective bargaining unit, including TWU,” the representative said, “to amend their existing collective bargaining agreements, and we look forward to coming to agreements that are fair to workers and ensure that we can continue to operate the Commuter Rail safely and reliably on behalf of the MBTA.”
