By: Ilana Siyance
In response to the multiple violent incidents on subways this year, Metropolitan Transportation Authority and union officials are asking New York state lawmakers to create legislation protecting transit workers from assaults.
As reported by the NY Post, the transit heads penned a letter to state Sen. Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-The Bronx) asking them to pass a bill before the legislative session ends on June 2nd. The letter notes that assaults on transit workers have “grown and grown in recent years.”
“We write to you asking that, before the 2022 Legislative Session adjourns, you address one of the egregious deficiencies in the New York State law protecting transit workers from attacks,” MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber and six other transit chiefs wrote in the letter sent out on Saturday. Subway safety has become a topic of priority since the fatal Q train shooting earlier this month.
Currently there is a law making it an assault in the second degree for individuals to assault or harass subway train operators and conductors. The MTA is now asking to add other workers, including about 11,000 more transit employees like station customer assistants, traffic checkers, ticket collection agents and their supervisors, who are now not specifically protected by law. The proposed legislation would also apply to commuter rail line employees, such as on the Long Island Railroad.
“The clock is running out, we don’t want to see them going out without this piece,” Will Schwartz, the MTA’s deputy chief of state and local government affairs, told The Post, referring to the end of the legislative session. Public MTA statistics show that subway workers were attacked on average twice every week this year.
State Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-Queens) also sponsored a bill that would add a class A misdemeanor to strike, shove or kick a transit worker. This measure is also being supported by the MTA, but it doesn’t look like it will be passed during the current legislation session.
“MTA frontline workers have been heroic during the COVID pandemic, keeping the New York City metropolitan region moving. Unfortunately, however, in recent years there has been a trend of increasing attacks on transit workers,” reads the letter, which was also signed by several Transport Workers Union leaders. “Our employees should not be subjected to physical abuse on a day-to day basis, including punching, spitting, pushing and other violent behavior.” Sen. Stewart-Cousins and Assemblyman Heastie did not reply to request for comment by the Post.
