Well, "The Cat's out of the Bag"!
As Kellys' discussed here for many years, the MTA finally dropped the bomb in NY newspapers yesterday. It deems the East Side Access not to be part of the Long Island Rail Road and will develop a new, non union, non-railroad agency to operate it.
What that truly means and what it will encompass is anyone's guess, but here's the plan as it stands today.
New York State will create an "East Side Operating Authority," something like the "Long Island Power Authority", to seek contracts from outside vendors to manage, maintain and operate the tracks, station, concessions, power, and perhaps trains that travel to and from Grand Central's new ESA terminal. It's felt that the cost savings, flexibility and of course "team diversity" of not using LIRR union manpower will be superior to retention of the present LIRR workforce. The MTA also - quite ridiculously - claims by doing so would relieve the new route from "onerous" FRA safety and Railroad Labor Act oversight.
The bomb that is not mentioned in the MTA's press release and that has not been discussed with the Unions is the MTA's consideration of a contractor to actually operate the East Side trains. What is being considered is an operation where an engineer from a contract company - someone like the New York and Atlantic, for example - would operate every ESA train from its eastern terminal to Grand Central and back.
Of course such an engineer would be qualified on the portion of the LIRR over which he travels. And, thanks to a thirty-year-old agreement, the LIRR's engineer's union allows such a thing.
Conductors and trainmen would have to be LIRR employees, and their Union took good care in including a "passenger train manning rule" in earlier agreements that appears to guarantee them that work. Not so with the Engineers' union, which permits non-members to operate trains on the LI's tracks. For now, at least, the MTA is claiming nobody has exclusive rights to operate on the new tracks, that the FRA has no jurisdiction and that it isn't even a "railroad," but a "transit carrier".
Much of this is State nonsense, of course. We doubt we'll see anyone other than LIRR engineers operating these ESA trains. The logistic and management nightmare would simply not be worth any savings. But don't think the MTA won't get the full value of their ability to do this in future negotiations with the Long Island engineers and other crafts. They will exact work rule, salary and pension concessions at every turn from the unions to save these jobs.
So far as other MTA nonsense goes, the FRA certainly does have full jurisdiction, as does the Railroad Retirement Board, the Railway Labor Act and perhaps even the Signalman's and Track workers' unions whose political clout is not to be underestimated. But in the worse case unfortunately, this will all pay out in a very labor-adverse Democrat-controlled federal court. Who knows what will happen there.
For now at least, it looks like another new management army of unqualified lifetime-recycled political hacks in cheap ill-fitted suits will blossom to oversee this new Authority. An endless and ever-changing parade of low paid, inexperienced but socially woke out-of-town contract signal maintainers, trackmen, engineering forces, building maintenance men, car cleaners, machinists and car inspectors are getting on the bus now, headed for Long Island's East Side Access' new headquarters on Park Avenue.
It won't be pretty, and it won't be any bargain for the riding public.
As Kellys' discussed here for many years, the MTA finally dropped the bomb in NY newspapers yesterday. It deems the East Side Access not to be part of the Long Island Rail Road and will develop a new, non union, non-railroad agency to operate it.
What that truly means and what it will encompass is anyone's guess, but here's the plan as it stands today.
New York State will create an "East Side Operating Authority," something like the "Long Island Power Authority", to seek contracts from outside vendors to manage, maintain and operate the tracks, station, concessions, power, and perhaps trains that travel to and from Grand Central's new ESA terminal. It's felt that the cost savings, flexibility and of course "team diversity" of not using LIRR union manpower will be superior to retention of the present LIRR workforce. The MTA also - quite ridiculously - claims by doing so would relieve the new route from "onerous" FRA safety and Railroad Labor Act oversight.
The bomb that is not mentioned in the MTA's press release and that has not been discussed with the Unions is the MTA's consideration of a contractor to actually operate the East Side trains. What is being considered is an operation where an engineer from a contract company - someone like the New York and Atlantic, for example - would operate every ESA train from its eastern terminal to Grand Central and back.
Of course such an engineer would be qualified on the portion of the LIRR over which he travels. And, thanks to a thirty-year-old agreement, the LIRR's engineer's union allows such a thing.
Conductors and trainmen would have to be LIRR employees, and their Union took good care in including a "passenger train manning rule" in earlier agreements that appears to guarantee them that work. Not so with the Engineers' union, which permits non-members to operate trains on the LI's tracks. For now, at least, the MTA is claiming nobody has exclusive rights to operate on the new tracks, that the FRA has no jurisdiction and that it isn't even a "railroad," but a "transit carrier".
Much of this is State nonsense, of course. We doubt we'll see anyone other than LIRR engineers operating these ESA trains. The logistic and management nightmare would simply not be worth any savings. But don't think the MTA won't get the full value of their ability to do this in future negotiations with the Long Island engineers and other crafts. They will exact work rule, salary and pension concessions at every turn from the unions to save these jobs.
So far as other MTA nonsense goes, the FRA certainly does have full jurisdiction, as does the Railroad Retirement Board, the Railway Labor Act and perhaps even the Signalman's and Track workers' unions whose political clout is not to be underestimated. But in the worse case unfortunately, this will all pay out in a very labor-adverse Democrat-controlled federal court. Who knows what will happen there.
For now at least, it looks like another new management army of unqualified lifetime-recycled political hacks in cheap ill-fitted suits will blossom to oversee this new Authority. An endless and ever-changing parade of low paid, inexperienced but socially woke out-of-town contract signal maintainers, trackmen, engineering forces, building maintenance men, car cleaners, machinists and car inspectors are getting on the bus now, headed for Long Island's East Side Access' new headquarters on Park Avenue.
It won't be pretty, and it won't be any bargain for the riding public.
