Union rep: This Pride Month, help transform LTD’s organizational culture

Presenter: It’s Pride Month and a local union representative asks the public to help. After the Lane Transit District abruptly outsourced its HR department, he sees an opportunity to transform a hostile organizational culture. From Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757, John Gangl.

[00:00:18] John Gangl: First day of Gay Pride Month, and I have a lot to say about the treatment of the queer+ community at LTD. There’s a lot of hostility towards members of the queer+ community who want to climb above just being a worker, climb up to be a union rep, an instructor, a supervisor, that’s where the problems happen.

[00:00:39] That’s not new, but it’s not the entire history of LTD, either. If you go back to like the ‘90s and the early 2000s, LTD historically has been very inclusive. Transit really does work well in general with the union to be inclusive for everyone who wants to fill those service needs for the community.

[00:01:03] You know, the union and the older management worked out a change to the benefits plan where you don’t have to be married to your lover to put them on your benefits. Because there was such a high population that by law could not be married to their lovers, LTD and the union worked together to make it all just domestic partnerships.

[00:01:29] So it did nothing, it did not change anyone who was married. You still get to put your kids, stepkids, that’s all fine. They all get to be on your insurance. It just opened it up so if you’re from the queer+ community, you could also insure your lover. You had that same dignity in your relationship that straight people have always had.

[00:01:51] So it’s important for me to say that this is not the historic norm for LTD, but in the recent years, over half a decade now, it’s been a culture that the management has accepted and covered up.

[00:02:08] They really, as far as I can tell, have done nothing to change the behaviors. Some examples: the one gay union rep, myself. Since I first became elected by a predominantly straight and very politically purple membership, I’m very popular, but you get to management and that’s where there’s a problem.

[00:02:28] Now, there’s those who don’t believe I should be the one challenging them. And so when somebody comes to me and says, ‘I need help filing this issue, please help me, this person has done this to me, this person has done that to me, the supervisor has spoken to me this way, I’ve been wrongfully disciplined by this.’ When I bring that forward to management and it just gets ignored, that’s obviously a problem.

[00:02:57] Presenter: That’s John Gangl, who serves LTD bus operators as their union rep. He recently sent an email message to the LTD Board of Directors and included local media. He alleges that a specific supervisor pulled bus operators out of their buses to issue threats away from the bus cameras. John Gangl:

[00:03:16] John Gangl: I’ve said things that have been covered up and ignored for so long I have no choice but to go public. And unfortunately, if I’m not careful, the frontline people get the brunt of everything.

[00:03:30] So that’s something I really want to stress. I’m not talking about the drivers, I’m not talking about the public safety officers. Those folks are unrecognized for all that they do for our community.

[00:03:41] I mean, the public safety officer is carrying Narcan around. There’s all kinds of times where they’ve done CPR to save a life. They put themselves in between buses and violence all the time. It’s not uncommon for public safety officers to get a violent person off the bus. They’re out there alone and they’re telling us, ‘Close the doors, leave.’ They’re putting themselves as a human shield between violence and passengers. And that’s something that I don’t think people fully understand.

[00:04:14] Like, I’m going to be talking about some pretty awful stuff within the transit industry. But it’s really important to understand that two things can be true at the same time: There are amazing awesome people serving the community and there are true monsters in the same organization, causing a lot of harm to those individuals.

[00:04:34] What happened with the supervisor is he followed her EmX bus all the way out to the facility at Willow Creek. That’s next to Walmart over on West 11th. Pulls her away from the bus. The bus is full of microphones and cameras. You don’t get to have a private conversation on those buses.

[00:04:51] There’s a really big hard drive and everything is recorded over a constant loop. It takes a few weeks for information to disappear. So when a supervisor does not want that information to exist, he would pull the driver away from the bus, away from the cameras and the microphones on the bus, and threaten her… That was the very clear message that he delivered.

[00:05:16] So I want to make sure that when I’m talking about the dirt on LTD, it’s not the frontline workers.

[00:05:23] It is the admin that they need to do their jobs effectively. An abusive admin, abusive management, and an abusive HR department puts even more burden on those frontline workers. And that’s really the information I need to get out. Because there’s just too much harm being done.

[00:05:45] So I really want to be careful here and take a moment and talk about some of the things that people don’t necessarily know about drivers. The general public does not know how challenging it is. They don’t know what we do. They don’t quite fully grasp that, you’re trusting us as individuals with our, the entire community.

[00:06:05] That is, we have a lot of routes that are focused on grade schools, universities, community college. So you might be sending your family member here from anywhere in the world to go to the U of O. We’re going to transport them around town safely. Same thing with your children, when you’re relying on us to get them to school. We’re going to get them there safely.

[00:06:32] You know, there’s rare moments where people crack under pressure. We are human; we’re not immune to that. Driver assaults are up. My union, ATU 757, we’re really pushing for a transit worker assault bill because that’s needed. We need help fighting that. We need stiffer penalties on those assailants to fight that, because it’s not just the driver that’s in danger at that point, it’s your family.

[00:07:00] A couple of times where unreasonable situations have happened on my bus: Driving a bus: There’s two men, they seem to be getting into heated argument. And I stop the bus, secure it, go on flashers, I stand up, I make eye contact with them from the driver area and I say, ‘Hey, hey, what’s going on? Are you guys okay? You need to sit in different areas?’ And they’re both like, ‘No, no, we’re cool.’

[00:07:25] There’s things I was not aware of. There was a young woman doing sign language behind her back and so, a passenger saw that, sat right behind them, and was just trying to make sure she’s okay. The very next stop was over by Valley River Center. As soon as the guy with this young girl get off, one of the guys that was in the argument comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, she was doing sign language behind her back, and I was standing right behind her. I saw it.’

[00:07:49] So I get on the radio. I start calling it in because he starts saying, ‘I remember this from a video on how to identify people who are being sex-trafficked, asking for help.’ And so all I can do is sit there in the driver’s seat of the bus with the radio, giving a description. Supervisors hear it, public safety officers hear it, those video, those audio recordings are saved. And it’s unnatural to just sit there and trust that everything’s going to be fine and accept that you have no control over that situation.

[00:08:22] But there’s also people on the bus. And so you don’t know if they’re going to court to win or lose a custody battle for their children. You don’t know if they’re on a job interview. If you make them late, is this the time that gets them fired? You just don’t know why people are on the bus. They’re going somewhere, it’s important to them, you don’t know why. And you’re responsible to get them there as safely as you can.

[00:08:46] And then you see a situation walking away, and every part of your being wants to go intervene and beat the crap out of this guy, because, hello? What else would you do?

[00:09:00] And I will say that the girl ended up being fine, because I was able to give a really good description; because there’s enough cameras at the Valley River Center; because our folks at LTD know who to call and how to get the police involved. It didn’t take long. They had a great description. By the time they were on the other side of the mall, they were fine, they were safe. But I didn’t know that until, like, at the end of the day.

[00:09:29] So you can imagine what kind of things were going through my mind. And that’s not a typical day, but that is a day.

[00:09:42] Bus operators are out there alone. We go to every stop on our system. You don’t know if somebody has some kind of crisis in their life that’s going to cause them to react violently and you have to really know when to pick your battles. You don’t know if asking somebody just to simply pay the bus fare is going to put you in harm’s way.

[00:10:04] So you’ve got to use verbal judo and you got to use your personality and your de-escalation skills to keep yourself and everyone on the bus safe, because you don’t know where help in the system is. If you get on the radio and ask for help, you have no idea. Are they right behind you? Or are they five miles away?

[00:10:24] So that’s what it’s like to be a bus operator. Those are some of the stressors and that’s why it’s in the top—I believe it’s still in top 10—careers in America with the highest rate of mental illness and suicide.

[00:10:38] I had the fewest conflicts. I hardly ever had a situation on my bus because I was so dedicated to just: ‘I don’t care who you are, why you’re on the my bus, you’re on my bus, you’re my passenger, you’re going to be treated with dignity, you’re going to be treated with respect.’

[00:10:59] There are times where drivers will have their faces—because we’re down on our knees strapping in a wheelchair. It’s happened more than once—you’re going to be close to those catheter bags. And you need to understand that that’s not gross, that’s service.

[00:11:17] And because you’re doing your job and providing the service, the person whose wheelchair you’re strapping in, they get to safely go to work, go to the grocery store, go to the pharmacy, visit friends, and do everything else that somebody like myself with a car can do. They get that dignity and independence that you and I and everyone else has.

[00:11:41] So that’s what it means to be a bus operator. And that’s why transit is so important. And that’s why you see my union working with the GM of LTD, trying to get transit funding approved. Because there is, through all the bad crap from the management team, through all the misunderstandings, through whatever ill will, there’s still public need, and there’s still those frontline workers who are there just to fill that need.

[00:12:15] Presenter: John’s May 21 email was sent a little over a month after the April 16 board meeting, when LTD outsourced most of its HR department.  A spokesperson said this decision affected six of the seven HR employees—two were released and four moved to different departments.

[00:12:33] We asked Lane Transit District to describe its process for investigating the allegations cited in John Gangl’s email message. A spokesperson shared the district’s policy on retaliation, which mentions investigations, so we’ve asked how those investigations were conducted.

[00:12:50] John Gangl said this Pride Month, he hopes the whole community will show support for bus operators by asking LTD to change its organizational culture:

[00:13:00] John Gangl: What I hope our community gets out of this is that we drivers need support from the community. We need community leaders to go to the board meetings, LTD, and say, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to people? Why are you using tax dollars to cover up all these wrongdoings? Why do you use tax dollars spending time doing all kinds of litigation to cover up your mistakes?

[00:13:29] The current management team has done so much to breach the trust of the community and to the workforce that it’s going to take years to rebuild any level of trust. We have a new GM who came in, was going to make things better. To be fair, he’s done a lot, but when it comes to bigotry at LTD, it’s referred to as ‘a cultural issue,’ and I hate to say it exists, but it does. I’m on record as experiencing it.

[00:14:00] Presenter: Union rep John Gangl asks for your help this Pride Month. Support laws that protect transit workers from assault. And read his email message, shared with the public, then ask LTD’s Board of Directors to use this moment to build a new organizational culture based on dignity and respect. The board’s next monthly meeting is scheduled for June 18. For details on submitting email or live comments, see LTD.org.