New York City, NY/ USA- 10-31-18: NYC Subway Employee MTA Worker New York City Repairing Station. (Shutterstock)
Local 100 President Richard Davis attacked the MTA for planning to cut subway service in an Op-Ed. Davis says service cuts will force riders to wait longer for trains, experience more crowding, and lead to more anger and frustration being directed at transit workers. He also says it’s “ridiculous” for transit management to claim that the service reductions “reflect what our customers are asking for.”
In the history of mass transit, no one ever asked for less service and more crowded conditions. The MTA unfairly wants to reduce subway service on Mondays and Fridays because its wealthier suburban commuters are not coming into their Manhattan offices on those days. This will create longer waits and more crowding for millions of regular New Yorkers.
Many of those who will be negatively impacted didn’t have the luxury of working from home during the pandemic – and still don’t have the luxury: blue-collar, front-line and essential workers, lower income immigrants and people of color living in outer borough neighborhoods where ridership is still strong.
Support Nurses on Strike
Davis joined thousands of striking nurses on a picket line and pledged Local 100’s support in their struggle for a fair contract.
Speaking outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, Davis said transit workers know first-hand how vital nurses are to city residents in medical crisis. Transit workers brought nurses and other hospital staffers to their posts by bus and subway during the dark days of the pandemic. Like transit workers, nurses were too essential to stay at home.
“On behalf of Local 100, we stand in solidarity with you, and we will make sure we fight for you,” Davis said. “Yes, we can! Sí se puede!”
Thousands of nurses, members of the New York Nurses Association, walked off the job at 6 a.m. Monday at Mount Sinai and three campuses of the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. The nurses’ demands include “safe staffing.” Hospitals have not hired enough nurses to properly handle the volume of patients. As a result, nurses are overworked and stressed-out. Patients are receiving sub-standard care, nurses say.
Nurses on the picket said they appreciated Local 100’s support, just as they appreciated the service transit workers provided during the pandemic.
“Without transit, without the crosstown bus, I wouldn’t have been able to get to work,” a surgical ICU nurse with 25 years on the job said.