New York, NY – In New York City, the public could breathe a sigh of relief when the alleged Brooklyn subway shooter was apprehended the day after the incident that left 29 people injured including ten people wounded by gunfire. Yet, for transit workers, according to national data, it’s just another incident in a troubling trend of increased workplace violence that should strengthen labor’s demand for hazard pay according to occupational health experts and union officials.
Transit worker were not alone. During the pandemic, spikes in workplace violence have been also documented in the healthcare, air travel, and retail sectors.
“I am thankful that no transit workers were physically injured in that attack but it absolutely helps make the case for hazard pay,” said John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, which represents 150,000 workers in rail, public transit, air travel across the country. “It’s the obvious conclusion to draw especially on the passenger transit rail side. Think about it: there’s no security apparatus that anybody has to walk through. There’s no ID check. There’s no metal detector. There’s nothing. We live with the threat of something like this every single day of the year—every moment of the day.”
According to the MTA in 2021, there was a total of 117 physical assaults and 2,380 incidents of employee harassment reported.
“The recent horrific attack by a crazed gun man in our subway system highlights the vulnerabilities and dangers our members face on a daily basis,” said Michael Carrube, president of the Subway-Surface Supervisors Association, which represents 4,000 MTA supervisors. “Violent crimes against transit workers continue to rise to alarming levels and there is much more the MTA can do to combat workplace violence in our transit system. It’s time for the MTA to join our fight to lobby Albany to pass legislation that would finally make it a Felony to assault a NYC Transit Supervisor. Without stiffer criminal penalties for violent individuals, our members will remain sitting ducks and that is completely unacceptable.”
LIFETIME BAN
In January, in New Jersey the Motorbus and Passenger Rail Service Employee Violence Prevention Act took effect which increased the penalties for attacking transit workers and allowed the agency to ban offenders for as long as a year or for their lifetime if the attack involved a deadly weapon. In 2020, the agency recorded 158 assaults on transit workers. The next year it was 183, more than three times the normal number of reported annual assaults, with fewer riders.
The problem of assault on the nation’s bus operators and other mass transit workers has become so acute that the $1.2 trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden last year requires the nation’s mass-transit systems to develop strategies to combat assaults on transit workers with provisions for withholding federal money if agencies fail to comply.
“Workplace violence, especially since COVID has been a concern for workers in many different industries—from retail to nurses, to home health aides— there’s been an increase in actual assault and threats of violence, not to mention this last subway mass shooting which put transit workers at risk,” said Charlene Obernauer, the executive director of the New York Committee of Safety & Health, a workplace safety education non-profit. “When we think of the impact of COVID on workers we usually think of their exposure to the virus, but we have to include this increasing workplace violence that’s also been part of the pandemic.”
Obernauer continued. “We hear loud and clear from the nurses they don’t want another pizza party or gift card— they want safer staffing with a better ratio worker to patient which has been proven to decrease the risk of assaults on our healthcare worker. For workers who are already working in hazardous jobs this spike in workplace violence is just one more reason why these workers need access to hazard pay and safer workplaces.”
A WORRY PRE-COVID
According to the AFL-CIO, workplace violence was a problem even before the pandemic.
In the national union’s “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect 2021” report, workplace violence death “increased to 841 in 2019, while more than 30,000 violence-related lost-time injuries were reported.” Workplace violence is the third-leading cause of death with “women workers being at greater risk of violence than men.” According to the national unions “there is no federal OSHA standard to protect workers from workplace violence.”
“Yes, it was a concern before the pandemic especially for late-night retail and transit like busses and taxis and then for some industries like the grocery sector that were enforcing mask policies during the pandemic which made workers targets,” said Rebecca Reindel, the AFL-CIO’s director of occupational safety and health. “Health care and social assistance is where we have the highest rates of assaults.”
Legislation to address this issue passed last year in the House but not in the U.S. Senate, according to Reindel.
“Workplace violence is an epidemic in healthcare facilities,” according to the New York State Nurses Association’s webpage. “According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), nurses and direct care aides experience more violence than any other hospital personnel. While overall occupational injury and illness rates in the U.S. are falling, workplace violence is on the rise, particularly in the healthcare setting. The National Crime Victimization Survey reports that healthcare workers experience a 20 percent higher rate of violence than all other professions.
ACTING OUT
Vincent Variale, president of DC 37’s Local 3621 which represents the FDNY EMS Officers, says his workforce was having a problem with assaults before the pandemic but “during COVID it got worse—it accelerated.”
“It’s a combination of the mental health crisis we have in this country overall and after being cooped up for two years people are frustrated and when they lash out the people in close contact with them, like us, we can’t do anything to defend ourselves,” Variale said. “You don’t see many people lashing out at police officers—they have a gun. But paramedics or EMTs don’t have weapons.”
Last summer, the airlines, the TSA and the Federal Aviation Administration all reported a dramatic increase in assaults on TSA personnel and flight attendants as jet travel increased. In July, TSA officials told a congressional hearing that since Jan. 1, they had documented 3,509 unruly-passenger incidents, 2,605 of which involved someone refusing to wear a mask.
According to the TSA data, in-flight confrontations jumped from two per one million passengers in 2019 to 12 per million in 2021.
