Busy Day for Jose as he shot uptown to receive a second honor in the same day.

All of us officers at Local 106 are very proud of Jose and all that he has accomplished and all of his hard work on behalf of Local 106 and for the other Locals that are part of the TWU New York State Conference.

See attached letter of support from Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson to Governor Kathy Hochul.

Our Condolences go out to his family & friends.  Please see the attached for services.

It is with deep sorrow that we have to announce the passing of another TSO brother, retired MTA Bus Dispatcher Antoine Farmer. See attached service information.

On Friday September 29th, the Transportation Columbia Association honored TSO President Phil Valenti with their 2023 “Man-of-the-Year” award in recognition of all Phil’s accomplishments. Many of the TSO Officers attended the ceremony despite the historic rain and flooding that took place throughout the course of the day.

MTA Bus contract ratification voting is currently underway. Please remember to cast your vote on this historic contract before the deadline on September 29th at 11:00am when the polling closes.

If you have ANY issues with casting your ballot and/or if you did not receive a ballot in the mail, please call 1-800-529-5218 Monday through Friday 9:00am to 5:00pm for assistance. If you need further assistance, please reach out to your unit Chairman.

Last week, Transport Workers Union International President John Samuelson sent a letter to all TWU Local Presidents in negotiations with the MTA-New York City Transit Authority calling into question the Authority’s truthfulness in this round of negotiations.  Samuelson stated that the Authority is lying about a cost savings that was achieved in the last Local 100 contract and not to accept any contract extensions to make up for this savings.  Samuelson claims that there was no savings from the elevator clause of the Local 100 contract, which is the exact opposite of what Labor Relations has been telling us all along. 

We met with the Authority today and the Authority’s position has not changed and will not change.  They want us to agree to a two-month contract extension to make up for the elevator cost savings in the Local 100 contract as part of the pattern bargaining process.  Therefore, we called for an emergency meeting with all of the key people from the MTA and our team including our President, Attorneys and TWU Int. President John Samuelson to get to the bottom of what Local 100 actually agreed to and whether or not we will have to accept a two-month contract extension.

That emergency meeting has been tentatively scheduled to take place in two weeks where we hope we can resolve this issue. Until then we will continue to try and get some of the outstanding contract items resolved, which there are very few.

We thank you for your patience and understanding as we are not the only ones in this position right now. When we have more information, we will post it here.

As we witness the exodus of those people who worked at 2 Broadway and the BSC it’s obvious to see we are headed toward a crisis situation.

Why should you care you may ask?

If you have a problem that needs a manager or labor relations person to deal with but they’re so short handed and overwhelmed that they take forever to get to it, you pay the price. The problems the MTA is facing did not happen overnight. It came on slowly but it was predictable, avoidable and self inflicted.

This staffing shortage has already led to contract negotiations to take much longer than in the past and for retro pay to take more than twice as long to be issued.

We expect this situation to get worse as we found that in the last 2 weeks alone several key people in management have abruptly resigned or retired and they are having a disastrous time replacing them.

The MTA is in such a bad position right now it will take years to get out of this hole they dug and to have the right staffing levels in the most critical Departments.

As a Union this is what we’re dealing with so when you are not happy with how long problems are taking to get resolved this is why and it’s 100% unacceptable.

It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of our TSO brother, Signal MSII Gerald “Jerry” Aleman. Our prayers and sympathy go out to the Aleman family at this most difficult time.

A collection is being taken for the Aleman family if anyone wishes to show their support. Please visit:

https://gofund.me/3548590a