I know that there are many people out there that don't believe this could ever happen, but the Pittsburgh media (except for the city paper) is in total cahoots with the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Every time that the Pg, Trib, or the networks get a story in this town they spin it in a way that makes the Unions look bad. For instance John Schmitz wrote an article in the Post Gazette today http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11077/1132789-455.stm about the "Union Sabotage," well if you want the truth put out there sometimes you have to tell it yourself.
Truth be told the Port Authority has known for weeks that there is no way that they had any chance to get the operators transferring to other divisions qualified on the work that they picked in time for the March 26Th deadline that they imposed. The PAT Management team is relying on their same old tactics that they will just blame it on the Union and the media will run with it. For weeks the Supervisors in the Instruction Department have been emailing their bosses telling them that it was an impossible task and it would never get done. Now when it is a week away PAT Management wants to blame and deflect. The task at hand has never been done in the History of the Port Authority, and it was too much to ask the Instructors to do in such a short period of time. If you are on the outside of the Authority you need to know how the system works. When a pick is posted for operators, the operators pick their work location first by seniority, and once that process is done for all 2300 operators the the pick is hung at every location with specific schedules/runs also being done by seniority until every run is picked. While that pick is in the works the operators then let the instruction department know what they need to be qualified on (learn the routing). In normal times the instructors have a few months to get the one hundred or so Operators qualified in time, and the ones who don't get completed, change their locations and are out with the Instructors until they learn their routes at that said location. This time is unprecedented, there was a closing of a garage, 190 layoffs, and hundreds of operators forced to pick a new garage coupled with Instructors being forced to different locations at the same time. So there are instructors at locations who don't know the routes to be able to teach the HUNDREDS of operators in a short period of time. The Port Authority says that you can do it on overtime, but they do not pay overtime they pay straight time, and they also want people to work in between their swings, also straight time. The operators would rather pick up real overtime by signing up on the list filling in for vacations. God forbid a Bus Operator have a life either, most Operators pick their schedules around their children, or wife's/husbands work schedule so putting the burden directly on the operator is completely irresponsible. The PAT Management team needs to come clean and tell the truth that they bit off more than they can chew this time, and the media needs to be more responsible before they spew the same old garbage from that spin machine located in the Heinz building.
