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SlightlyStoopkid t1_j9zte06 wrote

Reply to comment by Barstomanid in Dispatcher availability no longer all that’s holding back MBTA service by eigiarce

Why would they have to renegotiate multiple contracts to hire people? Can’t they join the union and start working?

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Apprehensive_Text_68 t1_j9zui5j wrote

I don’t have any experience with this union, but I have lots with other unions. There are often work change polls, seniority issues to work out along with grade changes and a bunch of other stuff before moving to external offerings. It’s a long and ridiculous process, especially if you have multiple unions working in the same group. The most I worked with was 5 unions and it took months to ‘get permission’ to hire someone externally. Hell, I wanted to move some machinery to a different building and it took me nearly a year because the union thought it was being done to ‘reduce overhead’ when I was literally just moving it to a different building to give them more room to work.

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SlightlyStoopkid t1_ja027ku wrote

I just don’t understand why either party would sign a contract that prevented them from hiring enough people to do the job. Even if it does take such a long time, wouldn’t you take that into consideration and start the process sooner?

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Barstomanid t1_ja056xy wrote

As I understand it, the current contracts only lets them promote into the roles they need from people with sufficient seniority. If you don't have enough people with 5 years of experience or whatever (I don't know the exact number) they can't fill the roll until someone earns the necessary seniority.

Which is, yes, a shitty contract that no one should have signed. Colored me surprised that the MBTA boxed themselves in by signing a bunch of shit contracts.

I could be wrong though, this is all hearsay.

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SlightlyStoopkid t1_ja078ri wrote

You’d think, after sticking yourself with a multi year time delay to hire an employee, that you’d want to start that process as soon as possible, instead of letting it get so bad that the federal government had to jump in and tell you you were dangerously understaffed.

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