Brothers and Sisters,

The Executive Board wants to thank everyone who attended and participated in the ratification meeting today. In total through two meetings we had 77 members attend and were able to ratify the agreement with a unanimous 77-0 vote. The agreement is scheduled to be presented to the MBTA Board Of Directors on November 16th for approval. We will update you all once that has been completed. We again want to thank you for your participation today to help get this agreement ratified. As always if there are any questions or concerns please reach out to an Executive Board member.

Fraternally,

The Executive Board

Brothers and Sisters,

It has come to our attention that members are concerned over materials distributed by the E-Board concerning the new contract and subsequent wages. We want to clarify that those numbers provided are not from the Authority and are essentially an estimate of what the wage change will look like once it takes effect. We wanted everyone to have a general idea of how this agreement will impact their current salary and provided these estimated charts to give an idea of what that would be. The Authority, who is ultimately responsible for providing this information, has not given us any wage change data and we therefore wanted to provide you with something prior to the meeting.

It’s important to remember that ultimately what you are voting on is not the information in the wage charts, but the percentages held within the Memorandum Of Understanding (contract agreement). That is what we will be voting to accept on Thursday and in no way will we be bound to the data in those wage charts. What we will be bound to is the percentage increases found in Section 2. Wage Increase and Section 3. Equity Pool/Longevity that can be found on the first page of the document titled “2023-2027 MOU”.

If there are any further questions or concerns over this, please reach out to an E-Board member to express them. Otherwise we look forward to seeing you all at the meeting.

Fraternally,

The Executive Board

As you are all aware, in accordance with our last successor agreement to the CBA, the Executive Board and Labor Relations had entered into negotiations to address several pension changes proposed by the Association. We are happy to announce those negotiations have come to a conclusion and an agreement has been reached between us and The Authority. Attached is the Memorandum Of Understanding that will outline those agreed upon changes, as well as a “Before and After Pension Increase” which reflects the changes in financial terms.

The Executive Board was also able to negotiate a successor agreement to our Collective Bargaining Agreement. As you know our last agreement expired on July 1, 2023. We have come to terms with the Authority for a successor agreement, which will keep the Association under contract until June 30, 2027. Attached in this email will be a copy of that agreement which outlines the changes, as well as several wage charts which will also translate those changes for you into financial terms explaining the changes in cash compensation. 

The Executive Board will be holding a meeting of the membership to discuss and vote on the ratification of the new agreement. The meeting will be held in the COMPSTAT Room (1st floor) of the Headquarters building located at 240 Southampton Street on Thursday Nov 2, 2023. As we did last time, there will be two meetings held, the first at 8:00am and the second at 4:00pm, in an attempt to let as many members as possible attend. We encourage all members to attend the meeting and participate in the vote. In the meantime, if any members have questions or concerns, please reach out to an Executive Board member. We look forward to seeing you all at the meeting.

Fraternally,

The Executive Board

Brothers and Sisters,

Today members of the E-Board participated in our second round of negotiations with the MBTA over the outstanding Pension issues from our last contract. This meeting, as well as last months, was positive and progress on the matter was made. Although we cannot discuss the specifics of the days events, we are hopeful this matter may be resolved without the need for arbitration. We are working on future dates to meet with the T and will update you all as soon as we have more information on this issue. As always please reach out to an E-Board member with any questions or concerns.

Fraternally,

The E-Board

Brothers and Sisters,

As you are all aware, a part of our last contract included the negotiation and mediation/arbitration, if necessary, of our pension benefits. We were scheduled to begin selecting dates for those negotiations shortly after the contract agreement was presented to, and ratified by, the Association in August of 2022.

Unfortunately, after we ratified our agreement, Local 589 had an unfavorable arbitration award given to them, which negatively affected their pension benefits. It was immediately evident to everyone involved that MBTA management was willing to renegotiate those benefits with the leaders of 589.

We have been patiently waiting for 589 to complete those negotiations over the last 7 months, during which we had a change of the General Manager of the MBTA, as well as the election and inauguration of a new Governor of the Commonwealth. We want to thank you for your patience and understanding during this time. We are aware many of you want this issue resolved in the manner it was negotiated, as did the E-Board. However due to the above reasons we did not feel it would benefit the Association to rush to the negotiation table, until 589 had come to an agreement and we had a clearer path towards a successful negotiation.

As of this past Sunday (3/12/23) Local 589 had completed those negotiations and ratified a new agreement which supersedes the conditions set in the arbitration award. What that means for us now is that we can proceed with completing the pension portion of our contract. The E-Board has secured a starting date for negotiations on this matter starting the first week of April. We wanted to update you all that although this process was not as swift as we had hoped when mediating our agreement, we stand steadfast in completing this portion and working to secure a better pension benefit for our members. As soon as we have an update on progress in this matter we will again update you. If you have any issues or concerns please reach out to an E-Board member.

Fraternally,

The Executive Boar

Brothers and Sisters,

The Executive Board wants to thank all members who participated in the meetings held on August 11th. We hope we were able to answer any and all questions pertaining to the new contract and all other issues at hand. Throughout the day we held three separate votes for the contract, which was overwhelmingly passed by the membership with a 117 for, and 5 against total. The agreement was meant to be voted on by the Fiscal Control Board today, however we have just received notice it will not be voted on until Wednesday August 31st. We will update you with the results of that vote and if any further interruptions to the vote are made.

In the Relevant Documents Section you will find an updated wage table that illustrates our compensation in regards to the new agreement. As of now we have not settled on mediation dates to finish the pension change proposals, but will update you as soon as possible when we have them locked in. As always if you have further questions or issues, please reach out to an E-Board member.

Fraternally,

The E-board