Washington, DC, February 20 — Today Muriel Bowser, a DC city council member and board member of Metro/WMATA (the DC Regional Transit Agency), held a hearing about getting Metro to change its policy on background checks. Thanks to PLP members, friends and many workers, the issue has gotten sharper throughout the city and politicians like Bowser feel they must address it.
Several people testified, some who work at Metro or others who have tried to get hired. One mechanic testified that he and his co-workers are very concerned now about what will happen if they have to take leave of more than 90 days and go through a background screening when they come back. Another, a contractor who for years built Metro bridges, tunnels, and railways, said that he has not had work from Metro since the new policy went into effect because of his record, which is decades old.
A lawyer from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund testified that his organization is currently representing four people in cases related to this issue and is willing to take on more. She highlighted the racist effect of the policy, excluding more black and Latino workers than others because they are arrested and convicted at higher rates.
Racism is endemic to capitalism; that is how the bosses divide and superexploit workers to maximize their profiits. In a communist society run by workers, the economic and political basis for racism will be demolished.
Two union officials showed up. The current Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 president testified that her union opposed this policy from the beginning (even though she did not fight Metro when they changed to the stricter policy in 2011). She again avoided mentioning the racist character of Metro’s background check policy.
A former president of the union and PL’er testified that the policy was racist in its differential impact on black and Latino workers. The policy, he argued, was implemented without any investigation or study to see if ex-offenders were more or less likely than others to commit crimes while at work at Metro, and was simply a biased racist policy that had to change.
The vice president of the union echoed what we’ve been hearing from Metro workers for months: to the riders, the face of Metro is black, and now the Metro administration seems to be trying to change this while stigmatizing the current workforce. In fact, in an area where 50.1 percent of the population are black, Metro hired only seven D.C. residents out of the 1,300 people it hired in 2013!
When Bowser questioned the head of the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES), he testified that DOES was warned by the federal Department of Labor not to work with agencies that have discriminatory practices. So even the U.S. Department of Labor seems to suspect that Metro’s background check policy is racist.
Finally, Bowser called Richard Sarles, the General Manager of Metro to speak. He argued that Metro has to protect its riders (including children and handicapped riders) and that only violent offenses automatically disqualify someone from working at Metro. Like much of what he said, this is a lie, and is directly contradicted by the testimony that workers had submitted. He admitted that Metro has no data to prove that workers with criminal records are more likely than anyone else to commit crimes on the job.
It’s clear that the Metro board and management are feeling the pressure.  We need to keep up the fight, and not get distracted by politicians like Bowser. She may have called for the hearing, but we are the ones who made it happen.