Emanuel to CTA unions: Be ‘part of the solution’ to budget crisis

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel presents his 2012 budget, Wednesday, October 12, 2011, at City Council. | Jean Lachat~Sun-Times

Updated: November 22, 2011 8:34AM

CTA riders paid the price with a fare increase in 2009 and service cuts last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday, insisting that it’s time for CTA unions to be “part of the solution” to a budget crisis.

Emanuel embraced the decision to go toe-to-toe with labor one day after his handpicked CTA leadership team agreed to freeze fares and maintain service in 2012, only if bus drivers and motormen agree to $80 million in work rule changes.

“The CTA is about the commuter. No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, it’s about the commuter,” Emanuel said, making it a point to say that he rode the CTA to work on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Two years ago, those commuters paid a rate increase. A year ago, they paid in service cuts. So, the commuters have given to the system. I believe the system needs fundamental reform. . . . It’s time for everybody else to contribute to strengthening the system.”

The mayor noted that CTA President Forrest Claypool has already cut up to $40 million from the CTA bureaucracy and, “He’s ready to do another $100 million.”

Now, it’s time for labor to be “part of the solution” by changing work rules that “don’t exist in the private sector,” Emanuel said.

“If you get caught driving and you’re a bus driver and you’re drunk, we actually pay while you’re not driving and somebody drives you over to bus driver training school, having gone on DUI. That doesn’t exist in the private sector,” the mayor said.

“Forrest has already made changes to the bureaucracy. . . . But, he needs a partner. . . . As I said in my inaugural, you will always have a seat at the table if you’re part of the solution. The solution isn’t asking more of the commuter. It’s not taking money out of capital improvements for the system. It’s everybody contributing to better serve the customer.”

Robert Kelly, president of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 308 representing motormen, was not cowed by Emanuel’s argument.

“Stop comparing us to the private sector. We are not the private sector. If we were, we would close down transit on holidays,” Kelly said. “This is their whole campaign. They want to get the public mad at the transit workers. He wants to air it out in the public like Forrest is doing. I’m not gonna do this.”

Is Kelly ruling out cost-saving work-rule changes when the CTA’s labor contracts expire on Dec. 31?

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying I haven’t had one meeting with anybody. I get all my information from you [in the media]. When they’re serious, we need to sit down. In the meantime, they need to shut up or put up. This has to stop,” he said.

The decision to put the onus on CTA unions to agree to cost-saving concessions — and rally the public behind the cause — is the same tactic Emanuel used this summer to try to avert 625 city layoffs.

It didn’t work. The mayor got the same cold shoulder from labor leaders that all but one city union gave to his campaign. He ended up laying off roughly 200 employees.

An additional 517 city workers — including librarians, 911 center dispatchers, health and human services workers — will be laid off if the City Council approves the mayor’s proposed 2012 budget.