While transit advocates have focused on the fare hike aspect of the MTA’s Doomsday budget, employee cuts are another major part of the authority’s cost-savings efforts. According to MTA documents, around 1100 workers will find themselves out of their jobs. The cuts will hit station agents and bus drivers the hardest, and those with less than two years of service time are going to be the first to go.
Both The Daily News and NY1 reported on aspects of this plan today, and while I don’t like it from a personal security point of view, MTA workers are known to, well, sleep on the job and otherwise not fulfill their duties. These cuts may just make the MTA workforce more efficient and responsible.
8 comments
Why didn’t the TWU speak out loudly in favor of the Ravitch Plan? Or at least for Sheldon Silver’s $2 toll plan?
@Ben
I agree wholeheartedly on where the blame belongs for the current MTA fiscal crisis: the Legislature.
I, however do think that the phrasing of your statement about MTA employees is disingenuous. Yes, as the photos show, a few MTA employees have fallen asleep on the job. Those also happen to be some of the most visible, with the least to do and the least supervision. Now I’m not condoning it, but with a setup as such, a few people are bound to try and take advantage of it and hopefully they’re discovered and disciplined.
But the fact that a few have done this, should not be construed, as is all too often the case, that ALL MTA employees are lazy. Everytime that we get to where we’re going, whether by train, bus, subway, bridge or tunnel, hundreds of MTA employeess have done their jobs correctly. How many tunnel collapses, train derailments or bridge collapses can you think of in recent memory? Me? I can’t really remember anything but one subway derailment, due to a defective part. Without the hundreds, no, thousands of hard working MTA employees, our city would grind to a standstill, as briefly demonstrated by the recent transit strike (which only shut down TWU local 100’s units of subways and buses, not the Bridges, Tunnels or Railroads).
So for the time being, keep your sharp tongue and keen eyes pointed to where they belong, at those politicians in Albany who are all letting this only barely recovered transit system head back towards the disintegrated hell we remember it was in the 1980’s.
Nicely said!
Amen!
As a MTA employee I do see a lot of time mishandeling but you can’t let that discount all of the workers who do, do their jobs & beautifully.
Heck, I fall asleep at work every once in a while. But not when I’m busy. The problem is lots of TA workers have nothing to do. Not just the token booth clerks whose job was mostly replaced by the machines, but the track workers who are scheduled at times when they can’t do any track work, etc. All it takes is placing the workers more intelligently. And yes, some of them will lose their jobs–that’s the way business works.
Take away the day time track workers because they can only work on the tracks between 10 and 3 and what happens when there is a broken rail or other emergency that requires them to fix?
It’s just like the fire department they are hanging out most of the time but when it’s time to work they spring into action.
Fine. Then find something to do during the day, other than telling the press they sit around all day doing nothing. Firemen have plenty to keep them busy–they train, they conduct safety seminars at schools, etc.
When firefighters are doing the things you mention they are NOT on call. When they are on call they eat, sleep, watch tv, and generally hang out. When they do the other stuff it is instead of being on call in the fire house at that time.