CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Members of a number of labor unions are backing a CTA bus driver who said he was fired for raising COVID-related safety concerns.
It was during the George Floyd protests that Erek Slater, a CTA bus driver for 14-years and a union steward, raised concerns about sitting on packed busses.
He insists all he was doing was asking co-workers how they felt about sitting on busses packed with police officers and protesters, and then he was suspended and then fired.
"I've been told 12 of my CTA coworkers have died from COVID-19. We don't know how many family members have gotten the virus from transit workers," he said.
"Nearly every day we are told we have to take individual responsibilities to stop this virus."
Nick Kreitman, a labor and employment attorney representing Slater in a federal lawsuit, said "he was talking to them and just asking questions about what they felt about being ordered to do this kind of work in the middle of these demonstrations. He was exercising his First Amendment rights."
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Kreitman said the cases is about free speech.
"It's protecting, frankly, everybody from municipal government using whatever levels of power it has to discriminate against each side it doesn't favor. Clearly it didn't want bus drivers talking at all," he said.
Members of various unions, representing transit workers, nurses and auto-workers, among others, held a Zoom meeting supporting Slater before presenting a petition to the CTA board demanding he be reinstated. Originally the meeting was a planned in-person rally.