24 Oct 2023

Green Line track fix could begin next month, take 2 weeks, GM says

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It will take perhaps two weeks to fix a track concern causing trains to crawl at pedestrian speeds along the Green Line Extension.

MBTA General Manager Phil Eng, during a meeting of the transportation agency’s board of directors Tuesday morning, said a discrepancy in the width of Green Line tracks could be fixed as soon as mid-November.

“It’s not months, it’s not years to address this,” Eng told the Board.

Last week, Eng revealed that previous MBTA officials discovered but did not publicly disclose a problem with the line’s prefabricated railroad ties, leading to tracks that were out of design specifications and not to national rail standards.

“We did a deeper dive into the project to understand why a project that was recently opened, new construction, resulted in conditions that were unacceptable,” he said. “What we identified was that we had tight gauges across significant portions of the GLX project.”

According to Eng, about half of the track along the Union branch of the Green Line Extension and 80% of the Medford-Tufts branch are outside of the industry rail gauge standard — sometimes called the Stephenson gauge — of 56-and-a-half inches. Parts of the track are between an eighth and a three-eighths of an inch too narrow, Eng said, despite the contract calling for no more than a sixteenth of an inch tolerance.

“That does not mean it was unsafe to run trains,” the GM said.

Under a proposed corrective action plan offered by the construction conglomerate that installed the tracks, GLX Constructors, work could begin as soon as next month and would occur overnight, from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Eng said the company’s proposal, which MBTA officials are still reviewing, calls for “10 to 14 nights of work” starting on November 1 to “address and regauge all of the track that needs to be done along both branches.”

To fix the problem, Eng told the board, the pre-installed plates connecting the metal train track to the wooden rail ties will need to be unbolted, the bolt holes filled and re-drilled, and the plates and track reconnected. The procedure is not entirely uncommon in the rail industry, Eng said, and his staff is focused on making sure the solution won’t result in future frustrations.

GLX Constructors — an entity made up of Fluor Enterprises Inc., The Middlesex Corporation, Herzog Contracting Corp. and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure, Inc. — will have to foot the bill for fixing the track problem, according to the GM.

The roughly $2.3 billion Green Line Extension project was completed at the end of last year, with a new branch that starts in Medford at the Tufts/College Avenue station and adds four stops in Somerville. A smaller branch opened in March 2022, adding service at the Union Square station in Somerville.

24 Oct 2023

UAW strikes at General Motors plant in Texas as union goes after automakers’ cash cows

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By TOM KRISHER (AP Auto Writer)

DETROIT (AP) — First it was Ford, then Stellantis, and now a General Motors factory has been added to the growing list of highly profitable plants where the United Auto Workers union is on strike.

On Tuesday, about 5,000 workers walked out at GM’s factory in Arlington, Texas, that makes big, high margin SUVs such as the Chevrolet Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade.

The strikes in Texas, as well as at the largest Ford factory in the world in Louisville, Kentucky, and a Stellantis plant that makes lucrative Ram pickups in Michigan, are aimed at getting the companies to capitulate to union demands for richer wages and benefits than the automakers so far have offered.

But judging from statements out of Detroit, the companies are at or near the limit on how much they’re willing to budge to end a series of targeted strikes now involving 46,000 workers that began on Sept. 15. About 32% of the union’s 146,000 members at the companies are on strike, and the automakers are laying off workers at other plants as parts shortages cascade through their systems.

In announcing the Arlington strike, UAW President Shawn Fain noted that GM posted big earnings on Tuesday, yet its offer to the union lags behind Ford, preserving a two-tier wage structure and offering the weakest 401(k) contribution of all three automakers.

“It’s time GM workers, and the whole working class, get their fair share,” Fain said.

But GM CEO Mary Barra told investors on the company’s earnings conference call that the automaker already has made a record offer and won’t sign a contract that jeopardizes the company’s future.

“We will not agree to a contract that isn’t responsible for our employees and for our shareholders,” she said. “We need to make sure we have a contract that is going to allow us to compete and win in what is a challenging market for EVs and also allows us to support the business that we have with strong margins in our (internal combustion engine) business.”

Last week, Ford told reporters that it had reached the limit of what it was willing to pay to end the nearly 6-week-old strike, bringing out Executive Chairman Bill Ford to urge strikers to return to work. On Monday, after the union took down the pickup plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, north of Detroit, Stellantis said it was “outraged” by the escalation because it improved its offer to include a 23% wage increase over four years.

All three automakers have said they won’t stick themselves with high labor costs that would make their vehicles more costly than nonunion competitors.

Talks continued Tuesday with Stellantis and Ford, with new offers from the union either coming or delivered at both companies. The status of talks with GM wasn’t clear.

Early on, the union struck at plants that didn’t make the companies’ most expensive and profitable vehicles. But as the strikes dragged on, Fain has targeted truck and SUV plants in an effort to empty the companies’ wallets.

At the same time, workers are getting by on $500 per week of strike pay, hardly enough to pay the monthly bills. The payments also are making a dent in the union’s strike fund, which was $825 million when the strikes began. Fain said it was still healthy.

Thomas Kochan, a professor of work and employment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said adding the GM SUV plant means the negotiations are at a pivotal point.

“The pressures for reaching an agreement that everybody can live with are immense on both the company and the union,” he said. “The effects of an expanded strike across the three companies and prolonged over time would be profound, and would have very serious negative effects on the companies and on the workforce.”

The companies, he said, are close to the limits on their offers and the union is close to what it legitimately can expect to get.

“There comes a time where the parties have to have very private conversations in negotiations,” Kochan said. “It’s time for the public rhetoric to stop.”

On the picket line in Texas, Ethan Pierce, a material handler with more than 23 years at GM, said workers sacrificed, making concessions to help save GM when it was in dire financial trouble around the 2008 financial crisis. “We started asking for some of our stuff back. They didn’t want to give it to us,” Pierce said.

Now, with inflation driving up prices, workers are struggling, he said. Among the sticking points is GM’s refusal to let workers go on strike over plans to close factories, Pierce said.

“If you’re being treated unfairly, sooner or later you have to stand up,” he said. “When we get treated better, everybody else gets treated better.”

The addition of the Arlington plant came just after GM announced strong third-quarter financial results. The SUVs are among GM’s most profitable vehicles.

The company on Tuesday posted a net profit of just over $3 billion for the quarter, down 7% from a year ago. But the company reported strong demand and prices for its vehicles.

GM later said that it’s disappointed in the escalation at Arlington, calling the strike “unnecessary and irresponsible” and said it will have negative ripple effects on dealers, suppliers and communities.

Because the striking plants supply or get parts from other factories, the automakers say they’ve been forced to lay off another 7,672 workers. And shares of General Motors Co. are down more than 14% this year, touching lows Tuesday that haven’t been seen since 2020 during the pandemic, when the company’s sales growth tumbled almost 11%.

Last week GM made an offer that increased its previous one by about 25% in total value, the company said.

Barra said GM has made a record offer to the union that will raise top factory pay to $40.39 per hour, or roughly $84,000 per year in four years.

The company also said the strike is expected to cut pretax earnings by $800 million this year, and another $200 million per week after that. And those estimates were made prior to the Arlington strike, GM said.

____

AP Chief Photographer for Texas Julio Cortez contributed to this report from Arlington, Texas, and AP Business Writer David Koenig contributed from Dallas.

24 Oct 2023

Florida orders universities to ‘deactivate’ pro-Palestinian group

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s university system chancellor, responding to a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed state universities Tuesday to disband campus groups with ties to the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization, marking the first punishments handed down to colleges here amid the Israel-Hamas war.

In a memo to school leaders, the state ordered a “crack down” on campus events led by the pro-Palestinian organization that the DeSantis administration claims amount to “harmful support for terrorist groups” like Hamas, which attacked Israel in early October. Florida, under Republican presidential candidate DeSantis, has staunchly supported Israel during the ongoing war and was monitoring college protests that have since ignited.

“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” state university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote Tuesday.

There are at least two Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at Florida universities facing cancellation through ties to the national organization, according to Rodrigues, who did not specify where the groups were located in the memo. The University of Florida and University of South Florida, though, both appear to have active SJP chapters.

Florida is targeting the groups over a “toolkit” published by the national organization that has received growing attention from officials. Rodrigues, for his part, seized on a portion of the toolkit that labeled the attack, now known as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” as “the resistance” and claimed that “Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”

By linking this document to SJP branches in Florida, the state contends that the groups are violating a state law that makes it felony to “knowingly provide material support … to a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

“National SJP has affirmatively identified it is part of the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood—a terrorist led attack,” Rodrigues wrote Tuesday. Rodrigues did not spell out any specific punishment the groups or schools would face if they didn’t comply.

Heated rhetoric over the Israel-Hamas war has roiled colleges across the country, leaving some of the nation’s top schools struggling to address the campus fallout.

The punishments doled out to student groups come as state policymakers, such as DeSantis and Florida’s only Jewish Republican state lawmaker, state Rep. Randy Fine, have pressed university leaders to penalize anti-Israel dissent on campuses across the state. More, too, could be coming, according to Rodrigues, who said Tuesday that future “measures could include necessary adverse employment actions and suspensions for school officials.”

Fine cheered the move to deactivate SJP chapters yet also bashed DeSantis for not acting sooner on the issue. Earlier in the day, the outspoken Republican lawmaker dropped his endorsement of DeSantis for president and endorsed Donald Trump after claiming the Republican governor has not done enough to counter antisemitism in Florida.

“Why did it take me endorsing [Trump] to get you to take action?” Fine posted on social media Tuesday. “I gave you all of this on October 9th. I have the texts. All I got back was a bunch of handwringing.”

The SJP chapters that are disbanded will be allowed to form new student groups outside of the national organization’s purview, Rodrigues said in his memo. The chancellor asked universities to grant waivers for groups that seek to reapply as new organizations.

24 Oct 2023

State leaders speak to U.S. House dysfunction as migrant crisis reaches breaking point

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Massachusetts is in desperate need of federal help to address the worsening migrant crisis, state leaders said Monday afternoon — help indefinitely held up by the dysfunction in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I mean this with all sincerity, if you’re expecting money to come out of Washington now you might as well go buy a bridge in New York City because chances of both are the same,” said state House Speaker Ronald Mariano at a press availability Monday afternoon, referring to the U.S. House’s inability to elect a Speaker over the last nearly three weeks and return to work.

Gov. Maura Healey announced the state’s shelters will reach capacity by the end of the month last week and called on federal action including emergency funding and expedited work authorizations.

Massachusetts is the only right-to-shelter state, meaning the government is required to provide emergency shelter to families with children, and the recent influx of migrant families into the state led Healey to declare a state of emergency this fall.

The state is spending $45 million a month on the law, according to Healey, and as of mid-October, the state is providing shelter for over 7,000 families.

Healey stressed Monday that the state is doing all that it can — including looking at more funding in a supplemental budget — but has “reached capacity” in terms of infrastructure and personnel.

Leaders said they are “discussing” what to do when it comes time to start turning families away.

“I think the important point here is that Massachusetts has done its job,” Healey said. “And so many have come together to make that possible. We need help from the federal government and help is monetary certainly.”

Healey expressed gratitude for the Biden administration’s proposed funding to aid the crisis but continued to call for White House action on “things that are within their control,” like faster work authorizations for migrants.

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