On Feb. 20, MTA station agent Noreen Mallory was brutally assaulted at the 4/5 Wall Street subway stop in Manhattan. She suffered a broken eye socket when a man sleeping underneath a bench under a blanket flew into a rage when she inquired whether he was okay. Recently, the job of what had for decades been known as the token booth attendant was changed, when, in an effort to bring more eyes and ears to the station, the job was expanded to require the workers to leave their booths and be available for customers requiring entry assistance, and other duties on train platforms. But apparently the safety of these workers was not made paramount, which it should have been. Assaults against transit workers have been widely documented, and have risen dramatically over the years, and this aspect was clearly not considered when making the change. TWU Local 100 President Richard Davis called the assaults, “a new form of terrorism against public servants.”
Read the full story by Ben Brachfeld for amNY, published here: https://www.amny.com/transit/mta-station-agent-recounts-assault-on-subway-platform-as-union-blasts-new-form-of-terrorism-against-transit-workers/
