My Pain is Yours

This was the sign near bus doors earlier this year...

When thinking of what to write in this week's post, many ideas came to mind. This Labor Day, I'm at odds with what this blog means to you who actually read it. Some merely 'like' the FaceBook posts without taking the time to digest what I'm trying to say, let alone state what these words mean to you. Some say they're tired of my ranting. After five years, I've found it difficult to find the fun and funny it was once so easy to describe. The violence against us has become so routine, this writer's muse finds it difficult to write of anything but how to defend my increasingly defenseless brothers and sisters.

It's sad to think the job's stress has led to a spiritual devastation commanding me to speak for those of us who brave the front lines of transit. Few of us dare to describe the ugliness which confronts us at every unforgiving curb. Frankly, I'm weary of doing so. But if I were to quit, I would be complicit in management's mistreatment of us. There are things which must be said, and damnit, I'm unwilling to stop saying them. Repetition of truth is just as effective as that of falsehoods. At some point, one tends to believe, having memorized the constant refrains of an oft-played tune. Our pleas must be heard, or the roar of thousands becomes the whisper of a lone mouse in search of crumbs.

If you're willing to roll under the bus of injustice, go right ahead. Just tell ol' Deke to shut up. My words are meant to save you from what some have grown too battle-weary to fight. You can remain silent, or choose to add your voices to what can become a loud reckoning. To effect change, you must demonstrate refusal to surrender our safety to those who are responsible for it.

Our management doesn't realize how it consistently disrespects us, even when it believes it's doing the opposite. Running a transit agency like a corporation is wrong on many levels. First, we deliver a service that cannot be measured in spreadsheets. If one hasn't operated a transit vehicle in service, the realities of an operator's life are largely misunderstood. This leads to unreasonable expectations. If you don't educate the passengers about what's expected of them, it empowers the troublesome few to wreak havoc. If you allow them to lodge untrue or uninformed complaints against your most valuable employees, you create a hostile work environment. When this happens, we lose faith in management's simple willingness to stand behind us. Disrespect for its workers, combined with a want-to-please-those who bombard its employees with false complaints, accomplishes nothing except bitterness. Suspending operators based on blatant falsehoods from scofflaws fuels our lack of confidence in management. Refusing us the right to defend ourselves while under attack is an infuriating injustice that cannot be ignored.

...and this is what it says now. Another way to disrespect
a transit operator. Go ahead and waste our time;
management says it's okay.

While management this week "celebrates the largest increase in service in decades," it fails to provide for those who roll the wheels on the graveyard shifts of the most troublesome routes which have become 24-hour service. There is no shift differential pay. There are by some reports, no added road supervisors to support operators who brave the darkest hours of transit. Once again, management patted itself on the back for a fine job it has done, while ignoring those who actually make it work. Sounds like a politician we all know.

We had several more assaults this week, so I hope we can all contribute to the upcoming BAND TOGETHER event September 16-22. Join us, not just in Portland, but everywhere transit workers feel threatened just doing our jobs. Wear a bandage on your door-side cheek with the number of incidents your brothers and sisters have suffered this year. Here, we've had 69 reported to date... and it's only September. Last year we felt the punch of 93 violent incidents. It's figuratively time to punch back.