According to real estate website StreetEasy, “A New Yorker would need to make at least $38.80 an hour — or more than four times the $8.75 minimum wage — to afford the city’s median asking rent of $2,690, if the worker is shouldering the rent alone”.
Each year, the cost of living and MTA workers salaries have drastically drifted further apart. Many workers are forced to leave the city for cheaper digs in New Jersey, Connecticut, Upstate NY, some parts of Long Island and other low rent places, just to have a decent living for themselves and their family.
In our last contract, TWU local 100 President John Samuelsen accepted a less than $3 raise in the 5 year contract for all titles. Thats absurd when you have to factor in that the cost of living has been on a steady rise.
Workers should be able to afford to live in the city in which we serve without working 100 hour pay periods to provide a decent life for their families. You can’t work 100 hours in a pay period and have a decent life, what about your family time?
The powers that be got employees thinking we are living “above our means” and the sheep are believing in that rhetoric.
It’s actually the total opposite. Our means are actually living above us. That’s why transit workers have become refugees and started fleeing outside of NYC to be able to afford the simple things in life.
Just to make 100K is a struggle for a transit worker and requires hundreds of hours of overtime. It shouldn’t be like that, especially working for a company that seems to always find money in hidden draws after our contract has been ratified.
Its about time the MTA pay us like we deserve and we have to make sure John Samuelsen does his job to ensure we get a great contract. Even he said the MTA is in a better place financially than it was the last contract.
This next contract is going to determine 3 things…
1. Whether the immediate future of this job will be for college students who don’t mind living check to check in the city in which they work.
2. How much our union really cares about its members and is willing to fight.
3. Does the MTA actually has dignity & respect for its employees.
NYCT workers cannot be the step children of MTA any longer. We must be put at pay parity with LIRR/MNRR.
The bottom line is we cannot comfortably afford to live in the city and raise a family off of these salaries any longer.
What do you think?
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– Tramell Thompson
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