Here are some examples included in the "respect" issues.
1) A workers was disciplined for abuse of sick leave; he had cancer and took "excessive" leave for chemeo therapy.
2)Schedules are tight enough that workers routinely do not have time to urinate
3)In any dispute with a customer the worker is automatically wrong and disciplined, no matter how abusive the customer is. This last is routine in many work places, but still wrong.
4)There is apparently a fairly high injury rate. I can't find any figures on the death rate, but I'll bet it is not zero.
Apparently the MTA is a culture of abuse against their workers. But I don't know if that is any better soundbite than "respect". This kind of thing is not easy to fit into a single short sentence.
This jumped right out at me. Are you talking about nurses, or transit workers? These working conditions sound exactly like the working conditions of many nurses, nurses aides, and others who do direct patient care in hospitals and various other LTC facilities and institutions in the USA. I wonder if the MTA administration uses the same playbook that traditional hospital and nursing administrations have played by for a long, long time (and have created the current nursing shortage, I might add -- who in their right mind stays in such working conditions? But then, nursing has a reputation for attracting adults from alcoholic and otherwise abusive families). I should find stats on these assertions if I'm going to post, but I'm holding the Ninja Baby right now, my new grandson.
There is a death rate for nurses, esp those working in ERs and state run mental hospitals, which are dangerously short staffed, insufficient security, and highly dangerous, crazy, and inebriated patients actively injuring hospital staff. Not well publicized, either. Injuries of RNs are in the top 5 occupations. If you're hurt, it's your fault -- you used improper body mechanics, not that no human should be expected to repetitively move large adults multiple times during a shift, and then there's the rising problem of obesity ....
Bullying in the workplace, by coworkers and supervisors, is so well documented in nursing that it's almost the model for workplace abuse. The pt is always right, no matter how overworked or stressed out you are, or how fuckingly insane the pt and family's requests are. (Of course we're running a hotel here! And don't dare tell them we're short staffed! Just apologize and kiss their ass for not responding immediately to the call light, say you're so sorry and will try harder next time, and await the write up in your personnel file when they complain to the management).
RNs regularly joke about how they don't have time to pee let alone eat during an 8 hr shift. RNs aren't expected to take their 15 minute breaks, either. It's an expectation of management, including at my current job. (California does have minimum staffing laws and a kick ass union, but it's the exception -- we're not all lucky enough to live in CA -- and Arnie vetoed the first and only mandatory Lift Team bill in the country thanks to those hospital lobbyists he adores).
OF course organizing and striking for one union of one well defined place, the MTA, is much easier than global unionization and political activism of all the nurses in this country, many of whom are socialized to be good girls and to think of the pt's welfare before their own, and who think labor unions are evil socialist institutions.