Transit worker unions call on safety agency to implement infrastructure law - NBC News
WASHINGTON — The main transportation safety agency still has not enforced provisions in President Joe Biden's infrastructure law that would protect workers as assaults on transit continue to trend up, said a group of transit unions in a letter on Wednesday.
"Our members include bus and rail transit operators, station agents, car cleaners, mechanics, and other frontline workers, all of whom are at risk of assault and worse each day they arrive at work," said the labor unions, in a letter to the Federal Transit Administration, a department within the Department of Transportation.
The co-signers include the Amalgamated Transit Union, which is the nation's largest transit union, the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department and the Transport Workers Union.
"President Biden committed to protecting these workers and that promise was enshrined into law as part of the BIL [Bipartisan Infrastructure Law]," said the unions. Biden signed the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law in November 2021.
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March 2, 202201:59
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Transit driver assaults have long been a concern but escalated during the pandemic. The labor unions representing frontline transit employees have responded to the crisis through legislative measures, including the infrastructure law.
“It has now been almost four months since the passage of the BIL and transit workers — who, like any of us, simply want to go to work each day and not worry about whether they may be attacked or killed on the job — have continued to face the threat of violence in the workplace,” the unions continued in the letter.
They point to incidents, including one in December 2021 when a Detroit Department of Transportation driver was stabbed by a passenger who was told to get off the bus and more recently last month when a bus driver was attacked when an assailant quickly exited the bus, picked up a tree branch from the ground, and beat her with it before fleeing the scene.
Separately, a bus driver in Detroit died from the coronavirus in 2020 two weeks after posting a video complaining about a passenger who he said refused to cover her mouth while coughing.
The unions are specifically asking the FTA to implement a provision that requires them to collect accurate data on transit workforce assaults, to reform its Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan process to include worker voices and incorporate measures to reduce the risk of assault in every transit system, and to update its national safety plan to address the risk of assault and public health concerns.
In addition to the rise of assault on transit workers there has also been an uptick in passenger to passenger violence— putting workers in a difficult position.
In recent months there have been several instances of people being stabbed, assaulted or shoved onto the tracks at stations in New York City. In January, a 40-year-old woman was pushed to her death in front of an oncoming train in Times Square subway station.
“Bus drivers take safety seriously and sometimes that involves mediating and getting to a place where law enforcement can intervene,” said Transportation Trades Department president Greg Regan in an interview with NBC News.
Regan adds, the unions have given the FTA and DOT time to implement the law and they 'should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time."
A request for comment from the FTA was not immediately returned.
"We want to give them space, but at this point four months after and we continue to see more and more incidents, we feel national awareness and pressure to get them moving is the right thing to do."
source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/transit-worker-unions-call-safety-agency-implement-infrastructure-law-rcna19296
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