Angered by Gov. Charlie Baker’s attempts to privatize some union jobs within the MBTA, the labor union that represents the T’s drivers and operators brought their grievances to the agency’s doorstep Monday. But the question of outsourcing portions of the T is still vexing Democrats trying to balance the needs of the transit system with cries that Baker and Co. are threatening middle class jobs.
The Boston Carmen’s Union rallied outside the state Transportation building in Boston before an MBTA management board meeting, calling on Baker’s administration to reverse attempts to outsource more of the T’s operations, saying privatization tactics won’t help fix the T’s daunting fiscal situation.
The protest comes as the T’s board is preparing to vote on whether to outsource maintenance warehouse services to a private contractor. The board is also considering using some private bus drivers.
“These are hard working men and women that come to work every day and do their jobs and basically what they’re doing is they’re trying to eliminate the middle class here,” said Carmen’s Union President Jim O’Brien.
O’Brien was joined at the rally by Taunton state Sen. Marc Pacheco, one of only a few Beacon Hill Democrats who resisted Baker’s 2015 move to relax an anti-privatization law (incidentally known as the Pacheco law) that would have forced further checks on the T’s ability to outsource.
“I wish I didn’t have to say I told you so, but that’s what I’ve been telling a lot of my colleagues,” said Pacheco, who mentioned that past privatization fights in the 1990s also began with requests for more flexibility in cost control and contracting. “We knew this was going to happen.”
The protesters maintained their feistiness even after entering the MBTA’s board room. IBEW Local 103 President Lou Antonellis said aloud what a number of the union members may have been thinking when he accused Baker of “not giving a shit,” about the middle class jobs the T provides.
When speakers took the podium to voice support for some level of privatization, many Carmen and their supporters booed and heckled the speakers. One man, standing near the press area, called Pioneer Institute fellow Charlie Chieppo a “geek.”
Speaking for the board, MBTA Fiscal Management and Control Board vice-chairman Steve Poftak reported to the full MassDOT Board of Directors that the oversight panel must continue to explore all options to shore up the finances of the T, including use of the anti-privatization law waiver on some services like maintenance and operation.
“We have an obligation to analyze potential savings opportunities in those areas. But we must also be just as aware of the potential cost,” Poftak said, adding that the board will adhere to principles of openness and collaboration with employees to explore alternatives to outsourcing.
“To do otherwise would be to disregard the Legislature’s intent and would be a disservice to our customers today or tomorrow,” Poftak said.
The two legislative leaders who guided that legislation to Baker’s desk in 2015 are standing by the governor’s use of the tools they gave him.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo said the members of the board “are working and they are working well,” but said he would like to see more evaluation of the T’s fiscal situation before seeing them expand the scope of privatization.
“There’s discussion relative to maintenance, there’s discussion relative to the maintenance room, so I want to see more of an orderly progression in terms of what happens with those items before we talk about privatization on top of that,” DeLeo said.
Rosenberg said the efficiency of the MBTA “is out of whack” compared to other transit agencies and the Legislature allowed changes as long as it didn’t harm the number of jobs on the front lines of the T.
“We gave the tools to the governor and the administration to do that work and they are doing it,” Rosenberg said.
By standing by Baker’s board, Rosenberg and DeLeo, two of the most powerful Democrats in the state, put themselves at odds not just with Pacheco, but with their own party leadership, which released a statement saying the party stands with the Carmen.
“The hard-working men and women of the MBTA are not the problem with this system; the problems lie with the lack of leadership and direction in fixing an under-funded and over-utilized public transit system. Gov. Baker’s push for privatization does little more than ensure that working men and women would lose jobs,” the statement from Democratic Party Chairman Sen. Tom McGee said.
Switching some in-house union jobs to private operators is a strategy employed by Baker, Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack and MBTA acting General Manager Brian Shortsleeve to lower ongoing cost in the agency’s annual operating budget. The T’s capital spending plan also got a lot of attention Monday, as Pollack and Shortsleeve rolled out details for how exactly the T plans to spend the billions of dollars necessary to reverse the T’s backlog of maintenance projects. The T plans to spend between $850 million and $950 million on reliability, modernization and expansion work this fiscal year, up from $743 million last fiscal year.
There was some good news from T managers trying to close an annual budget deficit while planning for longer-term maintenance projects—the agency ended last fiscal year with a deficit of only $86 million, down 28 percent from the previous fiscal year.
Morgan Sung contributed to this story.
Material from the State House News Service was used in this report.
