New York City’s bus drivers are generally the most vulnerable to all MTA employees. Every person who boards a bus must pass by the driver, and while new barriers are being installed in buses, the drivers are without protection from unruly riders. As such, the MTA recorded over 150 driver assaults last year, and 83 of them involved saliva attacks.
As disgusting as that sounds, the corresponding numbers reveal quite the reaction to these spit attacks. Of those spat upon, 51 took time off after the attacks, and their paid leave averaged 64 days. One driver took off 191 days — or over six months — before returning to work. Now, MTA officials and union leaders are squaring off over the time off. “We’re going to have to take a look and see what we’re going to do with that,” Joe Smith, the senior vice president of buses at Transit, said yesterday. Echoed Nancy Shevell, the MTA Board member who heads the bus committee, “You have to wonder if you can go home and shower off, take a nap, take off the rest of the day and maybe the next day. When it gets strung out for months, you start to wonder.”
TWU president John Samuelsen had a different take. “Being spat upon — having a passenger spit in your face, spit in your mouth, spit in your eye — is a physically and psychologically traumatic experience,” he said. “If transit workers are assaulted, they are going to take off whatever amount of time they are going to take off to recuperate.” Michael Grynbaum and Mary Calvi captured driver reactions, and it appears as though those assaulted are afraid of the transmission of infectious diseases, a very rare occurrence via saliva. It is debasing and humiliating to be spat upon. I don’t know the proper amount of time required to regain one’s dignity, but both stricter protection for bus drivers and a policing of time off policies are in order.
22 comments
I’m sure standing between support columns between two tracks while trains whiz past in opposite directions can be a psychologically traumatic experience as well; that’s why not all people (myself included) are cut out to be track workers. But it’s just part of the job. This is simply abuse of the system by its employees.
If that driver taking 191 days off got some sort of communicable disease, then I can understand it. If he or she were just “traumatized”, that’s too bad.
At my job, I need to get the boss’ permission before taking time off. How a boss can grant three to six months off is beyond my comprehension. This whole situation is as laughable as Seinfeld, Keith Hernandez, Kramer, and the Magic Loogie. Except in this case, it’s not fiction.
John Hirshbeck didn’t take any time off.
+1
As part of basic training in the Army, new soldiers are exposed to tear gas. This gives them some psychological preparation for potential exposure to chemical or biological warfare. If being spat upon induces such psychological trauma, then perhaps the bus drivers might incorporate something comparable into their training program.
-danny
When I first herd about this it was the top story on Fox 5 last night. My reaction? tipical tabloid crap that passes for news these days. The gulf of Mexico is being destroid by oil leaking from an underwater drilling rig & this is importent news?
The state of NY spends $52 billion a year on medicaid and medicare. No politicians making political hay about auditing . No investigative reports.
I think this drumbeat in the media about civil servants is just setting the stage for the near future when americans are going to have to accept a lower standard of living and worse working conditions.
I think this drumbeat in the media about civil servants is just setting the stage for the near future when americans are going to have to accept a lower standard of living and worse working conditions.
In “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler, http://www.kunstler.com it is pointed out as oil prices rise over both the short & long term, living standards drop. Unsurprisingly polititions are for the most part keeping quiet on this, because to para-phrase JHK, no political party could stay in office if the truth came out.
As strange as that may sound, elements of the book seme to be happening all around us little by little. An example of this is the rise of the T-party. Now to be fare, not the entire movement is nessessarily extreme, however there are those on the fringe who may want to cause havic for personal atention.
Believe it or not this book came out in 2005, if you read it now you would think it came out this year.
PAID time off? Wow if I was a bus driver I’d recruit someone to come on the bus and spit on me so I could get a couple months of free vacation.
Meh. It comes off as a small annoyance, not as a major labor abuse.
It would be best if every story about wastefraudabuse also included a realistic price tag. I’d like to know if it’s a $1 million/year issue or a $100 million/year issue.
Even if the example issues are insignificant, making the TWU look greedy, lazy and unreasonable in the media is probably useful politically as a prelude to paycuts/layoffs/firing them all and hiring some H1Bs from Asia (since apparently it’s impossible for Americans to do transit work for a reasonable salary).
This kind of waste and fraud is always endemic in a giant agency where no one take responsibility for anything. If drivers are taking off 64 days because they got spat on*, you can be sure others are taking similar advantage of the system for equally invalid reasons and it just hasn’t been uncovered yet. Give it time.
*I got spat on by a neighborhood bully in 7th grade. Somehow I managed to make it back to school the very next day.
“Equally invalid reasons”? As a supervisor, there are very few reasons an employee could give me that would lead me to permit them to take 64 days off. Stroke? Yes. Shooting victim? Yes. Helping family devastated by a natural disaster? Probably. Being spit on? No.
When I worked at a fast-food restaurant in high school, an angry customer once waited by the door for me to finish my shift and punched me in the face, knocking me down as I went to leave (he then ran off, never to be seen again). My employer paid for me to be checked out by a doctor (no damage beyond a bruised ego), but I didn’t miss an hour of work.
That’s one of the things I mean when I say no one takes responsibility at this agency. It’s obvious that nobody is actually supervising these dozens of employees who get away with this particular fraud. I expect this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Jim Dwyers column points out that the figures put out yesterday were incorrect. Of 69 reported spitting cases, 34 went back to work the next day, 9 took less than ten days. The remaining 26 took more time but were examined monthly by TA doctors.
I bet this won’t be widely reported and transit workers will have more abuse heeped on them by the riding public.
Link?
The wildly varying numbers lead me to suspect statistical trickery. 83 attacks? 69? 51 scammers? 35? Who knows?!
Unless the driver has open sores on their face or some other justification for medical attention, I remain convinced that anyone who needs even one day off for such an “attack” is simply gaming the system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05.....5tZzvBlUSw
Or, just do a Google search for Jim Dwyer, if that doesn’t work.
26 is still a lot. Their doctors agreed they should be off work for weeks? For what possible reason?
Well, if you are say a five foot tall female and an intimidating crazy person put their face next to yours and spit in your face several times for 20 seconds while you screamed and no one rescued you, and your supervisors primary concern was juggling bus intervals, that might be traumatic for some people.
Like when somebody dies under a train, some T/Os come back after 3 days some never come back. You only get the 3 days if they die. Just maimed you get bupkis. No, if two people die you don’t get 6 days.
You’re picking strawmen exceptions to the rule. When was the last time two people died under a train at the same time? How many five-foot-tall female bus drivers are among those taking 60 days off after getting spit upon?
I’m just responding to the kneejerk “EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE 26 BUSOPERATORS IS A GOLDBRICKING SCAM ARTIST”. My broader and more important point is that the MTA feeds reporters a story about it’s employees on Monday that by Tuesday is shown to be an exageration. Why was this story put out. The MTA/NYCT has a very dysfunctional relationship with it’s employees.
As far the makeup of thespat upon B/Os I saw one female on WCBS and one female in the Daily News-who had previously been stabbed.
[…] the corner of the Internet devoted to New York news was all abuzz earlier this week over the spit attack time off numbers that showed some drivers taking six months’ paid leave time following assaults by saliva, Jim […]
that girl should have gotten the key to the city for not beaating the crap out of the loser who spit on her. Have you ever seen what cops do to people who spit on them?