Transit’s ongoing signal inspection scandal may be coming to a head as 10 MTA workers are facing arrest, according to reports. As The Daily News first reported, eight signal inspectors and two “low-level” supervisors could be arrested as early as this week in an investigation related to the faked signal inspection reports. The workers will be arraigned tomorrow in a Manhattan court and with face felony charges of tampering with official records and a misdemeanor charge of official misconduct.
While MTA officials haven’t said much about the pending arrests or charges, union leaders are outraged that no one in management has been charged yet. “It’s astounding to us that the senior level bosses that orchestrated this entire charade, this entire issue that led to fraudulent signal inspections, have been untouched by the district attorney,” TWU President John Samuelsen said.
These arrests and any subsequent trial could be very explosive for the MTA. I’ll continue to follow this story.
4 comments
Jesus Christ, TWU. It’s not a charade it’s ten men endangering the lives of millions. Maybe some management is also at fault but show some contrition and don’t let us who generally support you feel that you put 10 criminal union members above the safety of the public.
I have to agree with the union on this one. If management insists on an impossible number of signal inspections to be completed within a certain time period and the workers face retaliation for not completing required number of inspections, they are just as guilty if not more guilty than the workers falsifying the reports.
How does one determine when signal inspectors have been assigned an “impossible” workload?
It seems to me that the TWU and its workers would have a stronger case if somewhere there were an inspector they could point to who legitimately tried, fell short, kept it honest, and was wrongly disciplined by management.
An article about a Signal Maintainer who did his job honestly and then got disciplined by management when he didn’t fake it:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/l.....s0wgwESduO