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To the editor:
In the last 2 years after being suspended for 6 months without pay then terminated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (clearly in violation of the contract) I have realized how stacked the system is against workers and how hard it is to try to overturn an arbitration. The court wants to discourage overturning arbitrations and the way the Taylor Law is written it makes it extremely hard to overturn an arbitration even when the arbitrator makes huge mistakes or changes the facts of the case.
After months of delays and paperwork and legal fees I have been stuck in limbo. Most workers that lose their jobs cannot afford legal counsel including myself. We are not allowed to challenge the termination without the permission of the union.
So, what happens if the union sides with the employer and submits paperwork saying I should be fired. Then what recourse does a worker have?
I have never seen a union file paperwork to have a lawsuit dismissed and to say a workers should be fired like happened in my case. The union and management agreed to break the contract and try to break my belief that I could fight back.
I brought a Public Employee Relations Board case under the Taylor Law to prove that the union committed a duty of fair representation infraction under the Taylor Law and an Article 75 challenge to the arbitrator's award.
I keep hoping that activists and those that stand up to both their union and their employer are protected from being terminated for speaking up for doing the right thing.
New York is supposed to be the state with the strongest worker protections, and it amazes me that the Taylor Law has not been revisited or revised to protect workers not the powers to be. It was once said that “An injustice somewhere is an injustice everywhere.”
The Taylor Law is meant to be punitive and not respectful of rank-and-file workers so when will anyone truly challenge and replace the Taylor Law to give rank-and-file workers real power from bad actors. I am trying to use the law to hold the union and management accountable even if I fail since it not written for a humble civil servant that I was.
Celso Garcia
The author was a Transport Workers Union local 100 Union member and activist.
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