MTA Goes Ahead With 250 Job Cuts
The saga of am I laid off or not continued on Tuesday with an unfortunate end for 250 employees. As you know the MTA had plans to lay off hundreds of workers starting a few days ago. However this past Thursday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the MTA from closing the booths.
Fast forward to Saturday where the MTA announced that even with the temporary restraining order in place, they were still going to lay off 250 workers as they were not needed to keep the booths open until the litigation is finished. Tuesday was the unfortunate end of the road for those 250 workers as they were forced to hand in their uniforms. Pete Donohue of the New YorK Daily News has more:
Hundreds of token booth clerks were laid off Tuesday – essentially for the second time in a week.
The 250 clerks were hours from turning in their uniforms and badges last Thursday when NYC Transit was forced by a court order to slam on the brakes.
Over the weekend, transit officials issued another round of pink slips – and this time, a judge refused to intervene.
“It’s like a yo-yo,” said Laurenia Jarrett, 27, carrying a plastic garbage bag holding her uniforms into a NYC Transit building in Brooklyn.
Jarrett, who is seven months pregnant and has an 8-year-old daughter, is her family’s sole breadwinner, she said. She plans to file for unemployment and look for work.
“It’s a horrible situation to be in,” she said. “I took this job for security, and that security is now gone.”
The MTA was set last week to lay off 475 clerks and close 42 token booths. The union, however, filed a lawsuit alleging state law requires additional public hearings to shutter booths, and a judge issued a restraining order to stop the closures.
But over the weekend, transit officials decided that 250 employees were not needed to keep the booths open and moved forward with those layoffs while the lawsuit proceeds.
Click here for the complete report.
This was an unfortunate end for these workers who I hope are not unemployed long. On a different note, I just want to say that it is pretty ridiculous that some workers & union leaders feel that the MTA is not in a financial crisis. The agency has some major cleaning up that they can do but even with that aside, they are clearly in a financial crisis.
The numbers are there for everyone to see. The problem for those in denial is that they refuse to see. If these are the kinds of leaders in charge of representing me as a transit worker, I would be highly concerned. They obviously are clueless about the current financial reality.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Is this a better way for them to save money than eliminating subway lines like the W and Z?