As the MTA looks to close an ever-widening budget gap, the agency will have to trim from every department, and everyone involved in the daily operations of our public transportation network will feel the pain. From those of us rely on the subways and buses to get to and from the office and school to those of us who work for the MTA, we all will pay the price. We’ve heard a lot about the authority’s plans to cut transit service, and today, the MTA will announce a sweeping set of personnel cuts designed to save $50 million.
The story is a big one. MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder is going to propose laying off more than 1000 workers. If all goes according to his plan, 450 of those workers fired will be unionized station agents. Another 600 — or 15 percent of the MTA’s non-unionized workforce — will be let go from various administrative positions. The major news outlets broke this story late last night, and many of the local 10 and 11 o’clock newscasts featured it at or near the top of the hour. For an agency saddled with what many believe to be an unmanageably and unnecessarily large workforce, these cuts are but a start in Walder’s fat-trimming efforts.
Of course, these cuts won’t go down easily. While Walder has the discretion to fire non-unionized MTA employees, the TWU has vowed to fight cuts no matter how small a percentage of the unionized workforce these cuts represent. Originally, these workers were to be let go via attrition, and the layoffs add a political element to the budgetary battles. “If they announce layoffs, they are going to be hearing from us,” TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen said to The Times.
As always, Samuelsen, protective of his jobs, grabbed the upper hand politically and framed this debate as one involving the safety of the MTA’s riders. Focusing on the MTA’s decision to target station agents, he bashed the supposed safety aspect of person-less stations. “Their idea of customer service is digitalized signage, rather than a human being protecting you against crime or directing you when you’re lost in the subway,” he said.
This isn’t a new argument in any sense, and yet, it’s one with which I find myself continually fighting. From a safety perspective, the station agents serve one of two purposes: Either their presence alone is a deterrent to potential criminals or straphangers feel safer knowing that a station agent is present whether or not these agents do anything to increase subway safety. The real answer probably lies in the intersection between those two roles, but there is a problem with that assumption: The station agents are not legally obligated to do anything, and they can’t see the platforms beyond the fare control areas.
Over the last few years, we’ve heard a lot about the station agents as the MTA eliminated many of them in late 2008. Since then, the pro-station agent crowd has defended them on the grounds of safety. But in a landmark case a few years ago, a New York state court found that the station agents had no affirmative duty to act if they knew someone in their station was in trouble. They have no sidearms and can do nothing about a crime in progress. Meanwhile, vast stretches of these stations are invisible to the booth agents, and in those cases, the workers won’t prevent any crime at all except as they would serving as a potential deterrent. With subway crime at all time lows, continued enforcement, and not the presence of workers who can’t do much, is the key to keeping the system safe.
Meanwhile, these employees, who field an average of around four customer requests per shift, would help out in situations involving lost passengers or those with bulky luggage. Yet, as the numbers show, those occasions are rare indeed. The MTA won’t eliminate station agents in high-traffic areas with large numbers of travelers. The agents instead will vanish from stations that won’t frequently miss them.
The MTA is up a proverbial creek without a paddle these days. The authority is broke, and New York’s politicians are searching for any way possible to avoid funding transit. If these workers are the sacrifice the city must pay, until the politicians are willing to find a lasting solution, we will have to suffer through a system with fewer station agents.
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