Commonwealth Magazine | By James O’Brien | Mar 18, 2017

IT’S TIME TO set the record straight on why the Boston Carmen’s Union agreed to open up its contract with the MBTA, negotiate amendments that greatly benefit the T, and help the authority climb out of the financial hole it’s in thanks to decades of neglect and underfunding.

Everyone appears to have a theory – but nobody has asked us directly why we chose to negotiate and help the T wade through a sea of red ink. Recently, I’ve read several opinion pieces that cite our contract as proof the suspension of the Pacheco Law should be extended.

The truth is our contract agreement is Exhibit A as proof that you don’t need privatization in order to achieve cost savings at the MBTA. For months before negotiations began, we had been seeking a seat at the table for a very simple reason: ours members consider themselves the heart and soul of the T.

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