Transportation workers rally to demand higher wages from MTA board members

By Dan Rivoli

December 14, 2016

Transit workers took their demands for higher wages and better safety protections to MTA board members on Wednesday.

The Transport Workers Union Local 100 got about 250 transit workers to pack the MTA boardroom and rally outside the agency’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, union officials said.

Six workers recounted for Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members and brass how they’ve put themselves at risk to help passengers in need of help, the grueling work environment and the bloody attacks that happen while they’re on duty.

John Browne, a bus driver dressed in full uniform, told board members about getting slashed from neck to face in September 2014 by a stranger as he secured his B 35 bus waiting to be towed.

“We work in a very hostile environment and it’s dangerous,” Browne said. “I would like to see more safety for the workers, the bus operators.”

Darren Johnson, a station cleaner, described the story he gave to the Daily News in August about helping cops nab a man suspected of groping a rider in a Manhattan station in August to advocate for a substantial pay hike.

“We’re always on the front line,” he said. “Someone’s always asking us for help.”

The MTA is budgeting 2% wage hikes for workers — an increase similar to the last contract, which union officials argue was the result of a weaker economy.

TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen, also an MTA board member, addressed his colleagues from the public speakers’ podium to implore MTA officials at the other side of the bargaining table to provide substantial wage increases now that the economy is improving.

“We can’t even afford to live in the city anymore and we’re getting priced out. We need raises that exceed inflation,” Samuelsen said. “These transit workers are here to tell you that we intend to bargain in good faith but we are not accepting 2% raises. We’re not doing it.”

MTA Chair Thomas Prendergast, himself a former NYC Transit safety director, meanwhile, expressed sympathy for employees who are verbally harassed and physically assaulted while working in a dangerous environment.

“Every agency head, every supervisor, every manager, every employee feels that pain when one of our employees go through that type of experience and gets assaulted,” he said. “When you hear those comments, they strike our hearts.”