CTA sends out layoff notices

The CTA has sent out just under 2,000 notices to bus drivers and other unionized employees that their jobs will be eliminated in the next two months.

The layoffs are part of a plan to close a massive $300 million budget hole. The proposal also includes raising El rides fares to $3 from $2.25 for a single ride, as well as the cost of a monthly pass.

“They want to mimic what City Hall did with the unions — the furlough days, the unpaid vacations and holidays, things of that nature,” said Darrel Jefferson, president of the bus driver and mechanic’s union, which is expected to bear the brunt of the layoffs. “We’re not open to that.”

Noelle Gaffney,  a CTA spokeswoman, said today that agency officials are talking with the unions to see if they can come up with other ways to save money.

The bus drivers union, one of 17 representing CTA employees, was targeted because bus service will be reduced 18 percent under the current proposal, Gaffney said.

Jefferson said he thinks eliminating “creative management positioning” would be a better way to shore up cash for the perennially funding-strapped transit agency.

“They’re more than top heavy,” he said of CTA management. “The scale cannot hold them.”

Ninety percent of the 9,825 member CTA workforce is unionized.

Gaffney said that since 2007, the non-union workforce has been cut 19 percent, while the union workforce was reduced by 1 percent in that same time period.

“With the proposed eliminations they will be reduced by 11 percent,” she said. “There have been much greater cuts and efficiencies with the administrative staff.”

Jefferson acknowledged that the agency needed to find some money to fill its budget hole.

He said he didn’t think the layoff notices were merely a negotiating ploy by CTA officials.

“This is probably the one true doomsday scenario,” he said.