It’s “turn ’em in day” for hundreds of MTA token booth clerks who handed over their uniform, badges, rulebooks and other MTA gear to complete the state agency’s move to do away with some 500 clerks in all.
Countless subway stations around the system are already dealing with having empty token booths, riders have to go back up stairs, over to the opposite side and go back down if they wish to find a staffed token booth. After which passengers are forced to go back up the stairs, across the street again and down the stairs of the side they originally needed.
Inconvenience aside, safety is a vulnerability the critics of the layoffs are concerned about. “To see it in freefall.. it’s a disgrace” is what former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton tells PIX11 News. Bratton is widely credited with targeting fare evaders which began a new era of a drop in crime across the city. “Fare evaders were a symbol that nobody was in charge.. that nobody cared” he said in a recent interview.
One glaring problem stands out. Turnstyles have been left open in many of the stations that have lost their token booths, essentially an open invitation for fare evaders.
(Source: WPIX)
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It would have been better to keep the pay low (the job requires minimal education, so a salary slightly above the minimum wage would be reasonable), rather than to have to fire people. Unions and politicians are responsible for pricing token clerks out of the market. The high cost of employees means that it takes a humongous number of fare-jumpers to make it worthwhile to spend more on token clerks.