Dear Friend,
We have a urgent soldarity ask from ATU: As of this morning  115 ATU Local 689 members who staff the MetroAccess call center in Hyattsville, MD, are on strike! The walkout at the MetroAccess Call Center comes after years of low pay, abuse, and disrespect from MV Transportation, the private corporation to which WMATA has outsourced this critical work. Dispatchers, reservationists, and schedulers here form the central nervous system of the MetroAccess paratransit service that provides essential transport to people with disabilities, seniors, and others in need of door-to-door service. Workers have spent years building relationships with their riders and disability advocacy organizations in the region. For years workers have asked for urgently-needed service and working condition improvements. As early as 2014 they united to propose a series of urgently-needed service and working condition improvements. Almost all of those have been ignored by WMATA and its MetroAccess contractors. In this contract cycle, MV has offered only a 1% wage increase despite the substantial profit it extracts from WMATA’s revenue agreement. Transit workers deserve fair pay and respect! Join us in calling on WMATA to tell MV Transportation to settle a fair contract today!

Call WMATA’s Managing Director of Access Services today: Call Christiaan Blake at: 202-281-8984 and demand that he tell WMATA contractor MV Transportation to settle a fair contract today so that this critical transit service can resume operations.  If that voicemail fills up, email [email protected].

In solidarity,