BY TINA SFONDELES Transportation Reporter tsfondeles@suntimes.com July 18, 2012 12:14PM
Bus driver job fairs
The CTA will hold three job fairs in an attempt to hire as many as 400 part-time bus drivers for the Red Line L reconstruction project.
They will be held:
? 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. July 30 at Chicago State University, 9501 S. King Drive in Chicago.
? 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 28 at National Teachers Academy, 55 W. Cermak Road.
? 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 15 at Kennedy-King College, 6301 S. Halsted St.
Updated: July 18, 2012 4:10PM
The CTA will hire at least 400 part-time bus drivers to operate shuttles during next year?s South Side Red Line reconstruction, the agency announced Wednesday.
And the first of three job fairs to fill the jobs will be held July 30 at Chicago State University. Once hired, the bus drivers will remain a part of the CTA workforce even after the project ends.
?The jobs start out at $19 a hour and go up to $29 an hour, and after three months on the job you become eligible for benefits,? CTA Board Chairman Terry Peterson said. ?These are good-paying jobs that can eventually lead to full-time employment.?
Beginning in May, the CTA will begin rebuilding the Red Line from Cermak Road to 95th Street ? a 10-mile stretch of tracks originally built in 1969.
The new hires will drive shuttles that will travel up and down the Dan Ryan Expressway directly to the Green Line L from each of four Red Line stations ? 95th, 87th, 79th and 69th. A local shuttle will run among those four stations for people who want to travel from, say 95th to 79th. They?ll also drive supplemental buses that will be used during the project.
CTA President Forrest Claypool said the goal is to give South Side residents job opportunities in their own neighborhoods but admitted the new hires will cost the agency an ?additional cost for a certain period of time.?
He did not provide details on how much adding the new drivers would increase the agency?s budget, but said it would decrease through attrition as other employees leave the CTA.
The job fairs related to the South Side project will provide information about the skills and training needed to become a bus driver, including the need for a Class ?B? Commercial Driver?s License. And the agency said more jobs will be opening later this year unrelated to the Red Line project.
Claypool in November warned that 1,000 union jobs could be lost, service would need to be cut and fares increased if CTA workers? unions didn?t give up what he called ?antiquated work rules.?
But in May, the agency announced it had closed a $160 million budget gap in part through restructuring debt to save $80 million. The other $80 million came from increased ridership and savings from frozen wages and a hiring slowdown, among other factors.
At the time CTA bosses said the measures were ?one-time budget fixes? that can?t be repeated next year. They are still negotiating changes to work rules with the union.
The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, which represents CTA bus drivers, could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.
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