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Statement from ATU Local 689 on Lawsuit to Reinstate Seyoum Haile

7/22/2016

7 Comments

 
The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 is suing to reinstate Local 689 member Seyoum Haile to his job because the issue of his firing has been investigated, litigated and concluded by an independent third party arbitrator who has ruled that he must return to work.
 
This suit was filed earlier this week because Metro has blatantly made the decision to ignore a legally binding arbitration award.  Further, Metro chose not to contest the arbitration ruling in time for it to be heard in court. Metro is now ignoring a process that they agreed to honor in our collective bargaining agreement.
 
In January of 2015, Local 689 stated that the L’Enfant Plaza incident spoke to a much larger issue of a seriously lacking safety culture in the Metro system. No single employee should have to bear the brunt of a system-wide failure, especially when the responsibility fell on Metro managers who were fully aware of the safety breakdowns and failure by ROCC staff to conduct proper testing.
 
Metro attempted and failed to make Mr. Haile the scapegoat of the L’Enfant Plaza incident when they fired him. As written in yesterday’s Washington Post article, Metro managers and arbitrators have both acknowledged that Mr. Haile was not responsible for the death and injuries that occurred, and that is a fact.
 
We look forward to Metro honoring its legal obligation to bring Mr. Haile back to work without continuing an unnecessary legal challenge that will only waste the money of tax payers and the riding public. The issue is concluded and Metro must obey the law. 
7 Comments
Zach
7/22/2016 01:08:09 pm

Local 689: Get someone killed, get to come back to work.

Reply
Rick
7/22/2016 02:49:23 pm

The guy falsified reports. If everyone's doing that, then everyone needs to be fired.

Reply
DCGuy
7/22/2016 03:16:11 pm

They're not wrong, even if that dude had not been completely negligent and lazy, chances are the person who was supposed to fix the issue would have been equally negligent and lazy. The summery of their statement is most of WMATA is super negligent and lazy so you can't blame one person which means we should blame them all and they should all be gone.

It's hilarious that the ATU is complaining WMATA isn't following the contract, when the case is about one of their workers not following his contract(his job) which resulted(indirectly) in the death of a passenger.

Reply
David Stephen
7/22/2016 03:19:19 pm

That is not correct. WaPo reported it and it is in the arbitration decision that Haile's actions did not result in the incident. This was the result of a malfunctioning mother board which Haile had no control over. They were making him a scapegoat for an unrelated issue. The arbitrator saw that and responded accordingly.

Reply
Chris
7/22/2016 03:31:52 pm

Union doing its job, defending its members.

Issue is moral. The said worker deliberately falsified maintenance data that contributed to the death of an innocent person. Back on the job ? You must be kidding. Maybe we should even promote this guy

Dave
7/22/2016 04:46:30 pm

If we back off that this single person's actions led to the incident where someone died, he still falsified documents. How is this not an offense that leads to being fired. I'm pro Union most of the time but you all are the problem. You protect someone who lies and will continue to protect them. I will now just assume any wmata employee can do anything they want because a sorry excuse for a union will protect them.

Reply
Roland
7/23/2016 11:09:03 am

You guys are only drawing your conclusion from information you get from the media and off of this page, there was factual information presented in arbitration, which exonerated him from termination.

Reply



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ATU LOCAL 689

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