RANTINGS OF A FORMER TRIMET BUS DRIVER: 04/01/2016

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Classic tweets

Friday, April 29, 2016

Our "leaders" have decided we will have light rail to Tualatin

Trimet retiree questions Randy Stedmen's motivation

Consultant report on Trimet Max control operations

I posted this study on twitter. Each tweet has 4 pages of the study attached. You need to click on each tweet then scroll through the pics to see the full study

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Mr and Mrs Tim Helmer at the Trimet board of directors

Although me and Jefferey had a falling out last election there was a time we were very good pals!

He was the man that stood by me as Trimet tried its best to bully me into submission.

He was a major influence on the blog and there are many references to his struggles documented here.

Since he has decided to retire from ATU757 official representation I thought it would be a good time to re-post some of the material

He is an iconic Trimet employee and ATU757 representative.

Neil Mcfarlane: Trimet general manager

Steve Fung: retired Trimet bus driver receiving award at Trimet

Blog regular Steve Fung happened to run into Trimet general manager Neil Mcfarlane on the MAX on the way to the airport.
(I actually ran into Neil once at the airport myself)
Neil was on his way to Denver while Steve was on his way to to Columbus.

They had a very nice chat on the train and it was Neil that came up to Steve.

Neil Mcfarlane, a nice guy doing bad things.
(do readers even know that Neil Mcfarlane is the man responsible for "all" the light rail in Portland? Its true!)

Neil Berlin at the Trimet board meeting

Full Trimet board meeting

They have another meeting with another government agency before the board meeting. While it's the usual "what a great job you're doing" there is some interesting info there

https://youtu.be/fiwX1Y6L4DY

Patrick Coomer's heartfelt testimony to the Trimet board of directors

Crimes against drivers double, crimes against riders cut in 1/2

http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2016/04/attacks_on_trimet_drivers_doub.html

Something doesn't add up correctly here

Most people know that most incidents are never reported.

Take these figures with a grain of salt

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Trimet ridership still flat-lining

The ATU757 election is over the second time now.

Twice a majority of the voting members have made a decision about who should lead this local.

The leaders of our union are chosen from the ranks of those employed at the properties represented by the union.

The only qualification needed to run for office is that you are employed at a property.

You don't have to "know someone" to run for office.

You don't need a fancy degree or certification.

You don't need to be politically connected.

Anybody can run.

This is democracy at its root level, the ground floor of democracy.

$175 fine for being 2 minutes late

Represents the *worst* of government predation

Monday, April 25, 2016

Trimet's latest close call video

I still contend that light rail should always proceed at WALKING SPEED when crossing uncontrolled pedestrian walkways

http://youtu.be/FGZFrAfhPRM

ATU757 election winners and losers

WINNER!

SHIRLEY BLOCK!

The biggest victory goes to Shirley Block who basically decimated the opposition.

As I have said in previous posts, she deserves this job for multiple reasons.

The number one reason: she has fought long and hard against the tyranny that exists from the Trimet management.

Many people scoff when I use the word "tyranny" but that is exactly what it is. The people running Trimet have engaged in many ethically questionable tactics.
Tactics that border on illegal.
The problem is that Trimet is part of the vast government machinery which functions primarily to protect itself and all of its tentacles.

I can provide many examples to illustrate my point but here are a few.

The Secret Raises.

Withholding evidence from a court of law

The fabrication of evidence to prosecute Lane Jensen

Tried to illegally force Trimet union employees to "pay back" to Trimet benefits already received

Illegally deducting payments for health insurance which were Trimet's legal responsibility to pay

I won't bring up any of the unethical behavior I was forced to endure while still working as an employee at Trimet.

And how is Trimet able to get away with this outrageous behavior?

This is Portland where an interconnected class of local 'good old boys' run all the various government entities so there is no redress there.

The mainstream media has no interest in investigating any of these issues either although they did investigate the secret raises.

However after much gnashing of teeth there were never any followup stories.

The "investigation" by the "Secretary of State" of the secret raises never even mentioned it in their "report".

All the institutions in the greater Portland area are complicit in their anti union/pro management 'good old boys' attitudes

Anyway the point I am trying to make is that Shirley Block is well aware of the issues and personalities attached to them.

Trimet officials don't "like" Shirley, which is another reason for her to be the one sitting at the top.
She represents the total opposite to the Trimet technocratic class.
They are all white, she is black.
They all have fancy degrees, she does not.

These arrogant Trimet officials may have thought Shirley was pretty funny.
I bet they are not laughing anymore.

Shirley might not be the greatest public speaker, but we don't need a public speaker, we need a tough no nonsense leader.
She represents everything that the Trimet technocrats disrespect.
It must be killing them to have to deal with her as an equal.

WINNER

CHRIS DAY

Although Chris didn't win he came awfully close to unseating Jonathan Hunt.

As a result he has established himself as a credible voice at ATU757.

Jonathan Hunt is an ATU icon at this point and the fact that he only got a handful more votes than Chris did should be a wake up call for Jonathan.

Jonathan needs to do something about his relationship with members if he wants to continue serving.

LOSER

BRUCE HANSEN

A crushing defeat for Bruce Hansen.

I don't know what else there is to say about it.

His capitulation In the last contract has proven fatal.
Bruce has been extremely gracious throughout the process.
He is a real gentleman, that's for sure.

LOSER

NEIL MCFARLANE AND HIS HENCHMAN STEDMAN

Despite Trimet's interfering in the election and attempting to scare employees to vote for Bruce they lost.

And they lost big.

They will have a hell of a fight on their hands now.

Employees should expect all sorts of unethical behavior headed their way.

They will resort to bullying because that is what they do.

Despite all the efforts of the highly skilled Trimet marketing/public relations department, the truth is that the employees are not a happy bunch.
This election proves that point once again.

The leaders at Trimet are so disconnected from reality, in their "gated community" that they don't have a clue.

Luckily for them they are employed in a tax funded agency that allows this sort of incompetence and have a sock puppet board of directors.

Chris Day

Here is a breakdown of this rerun election:

5176 Ballots was mailed out to members

2350 Members Voted and Mailed their ballots back.

1 scan was a blank paper so that is why the count says 2351

Now that the sour grapes pissing contest is over, can we pls focus on operators' pay and working conditions? #trimet https://t.co/OkFijluY12
— Jonathan Gates (@Gates_Jon) April 25, 2016

ATU757 members vote to KEEP THE TEAM

Shirley and Jon remain in office!

-------------------------------------

The final tally is as follows:

And even WORSE!

I just learned of this story of an operator who was assaulted on the mall recently who could have lost their life.

Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families in their time of need. Hopefully they have the opportunity to fully recover after such a horrendous attack.

Some of the details that I heard was the operator was at 5th and pine, open their door and a guy came in Blitzkrieg Style and pull the operator off the bus had them in a Chokehold and was attempting to stab them.

A bystander came out and helped the operator by kicking the assailant in the head, and the guy runs off.

Police arrived but was questionable whether they going to pursue the assailant because they were homeless.

It just gets worse and worse out there

Okay rant time......tonight had a crazy passenger.....picked him up on 148th and Division and I knew I was in trouble when he said he has two complaints against Tri-met and just got out of jail. He tells me to drive him to 130th and didn't display a fare, and then proceeds to yell at two teenage girls. I pull over at 130th and tell him as nice as i can to get off my bus and he tells me to take him to 122nd or else. I say or else what and he goes nuts. he starts threatening me (never got within 5 steps of the drivers area) and refuses to leave the bus.

You wanna really be a bus driver?

Saturday, April 23, 2016

CLASSIC TRIMET TWEETS

TriMet unveils timely, if tasteless, MAX project marketing:
Purple Train Purple Train
Purple Train Purple Train
Purple Train Purple Train
— Ron (@TelemachusRome) April 23, 2016

I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted one time to see you laughing
I only want to see you laughing in the Purple Train#TriMet
— Ron (@TelemachusRome) April 23, 2016

If Hansen/Day win this election it's H-U-G-E !!!!

Bruce Hansen top, Chris Day bottom

It turns out it wasn't even close for Bruce

Trimet white shirt blows a solid red light

"when you drive, do you do everything illegal?"
"Yes."
"GREAT YOU'RE HIRED. YOU GOT THE JOB"

GG @trimet pic.twitter.com/hfUvcWbQy0
— MEEPY-GAL (@meepygirl) April 22, 2016

What happened to the class action lawsuit against Trimet for ripping off its drivers?

Last I heard there were settlement hearings between our lawyers and Trimet.

They must have fallen apart because we have never heard anything since and the last court filings were in July 2015.

My guess is that this is waiting to go to trial now.

You know how long that takes.

Below is a list of all the various motions and filings by the parties. I have most of them highlighted and underlined but there were so many I gave up towards the end.

As you can see its been a long hard road and must be thousands of hours of legal work involved here

Pathetic

Thursday, April 21, 2016

No matter who wins the ATU757 election time for union members to pull together

The Time to argue amongst ourselves is over.

It's Trimet that is the enemy

The same company that never figured out how to make a ticket machine work is now giving us ELECTRONIC FARES

Kinda scary huh?

Trimet Chaos

Career Technocrats shucking and jiving while getting rich

might have to hit <ctrl> <+> to see the incidents

Shots fired at Trimet bus

This is not the first time this has happened. For some unknown reason the media got all excited this time. In previous incidents the media didn't care

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/04/teenage_girl_riding_trimet_bus.html#incart_river_home

Pathetic

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

OPAL to release Trimet budget analysis

In case you may have forgotten, in 2012 OPAL went to the Trimet board of directors and publicly raised concerns about Mcfarlane and his staff raising fares, cutting service, and cutting employee benefits.

That was the year that Trimet technocrats (unelected and unaccountable) doubled the size of their 'contingency' budget. OPAL found something strange about this. The board of course, being nothing but sock puppets, politely listened and then did what they always do. Gave Mcfarlane what he wanted.

About 8 months later it came to light that Mcfarlane and his overpaid staff of lackeys had hidden raises for themselves while making the rest of the people involved with Trimet suffer substantial losses

It was a watershed event to me because what became clear after that scandal broke was that tri-Met will never be held accountable for anything they do.

It became clear that the Portland transit agency is run by a "gang" with very questionable ethics. And that other "leaders" in the area actually defended this gross deriliction of duty. I'm referring to the now governor of the state of Oregon who at the time was the Secretary of State.

And then there is our useless mainstream media, which did cover the pay raise scandal to their credit, but they never did any followup and they never actually mentioned that Opal had raised serious concerns months previous to the revelations. The whole thing was dropped and the public, being the public, just forgot about it.

So I am looking forward to the single best analysis of Trimet budget shenigans by the only people qualified to perform this work

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Trimess

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Even the Portland Mercury feels it necessary to swipe at union people

It has nothing to do with the story but there it is

http://ow.ly/4mKg4a

Friday, April 15, 2016

Jonathan Hunts explanation on why we no longer have the right to strike

Uh, can somebody out there make any sense out of this

Chris Day

The link I put the past Bulletins on is http://chrisdayatu757.info/Bulletin/ so you can access Bulletins from 2005 to 2015.

The one that Jon addresses about binding arbitration is July 2007

Here is something that I posted on the Union Brothers and Sisters site:

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Trimet attempts to cheat more citizens

First Trimet tried to low ball this woman offering her $1,040 and after she got an attorney they offered her $22,000.

Then they tried to cheat her out of the attorneys fees. Good going Trimet. Your lack of ethics is at least consistent.

The Oregon Supreme court ruled against Trimet

TriMet v. Aizawa :: 2016 :: Oregon Court of Appeals Decisions :: Oregon Case Law :: Oregon Law :: U.S. Law :: Justia