Over protests, MTA cuts more transit jobs

On March 24, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority continued to swing its budget axe, eliminating two major subway lines and dozens of buses in New York City.

The vote for this decision took place at its monthly board meeting. About 20 transit workers, mostly station agents, descended on the board to speak out at the public comments section of the meeting, as did representatives of the Bail Out the People Movement and other members of the public.

Station agents account for 450 of the 600 layoffs planned by the MTA for Transport Workers Union Local 100. Many union and other activists spoke at the podium about how the banks drain money out of the MTA.

The MTA went ahead and voted for the cuts, which will eliminate $93 million in the agency’s expenses. Media coverage included some station agent testimony about the hardships layoffs would impose. The coverage on the devastating cuts portrayed them as inevitable actions on the part of an agency constantly referred to as “cash-strapped.”

Two days after this meeting, Bloomberg Business Week reported the MTA had hired an ex-Wall Street banker to be its new finance chief.

The March 26 article, “N.Y. MTA Taps Ex-Bear Stearns Banker for Finance Job,” exposes how the agency is used to enrich banks and Wall Street firms while its board members impose hardships on the people they are supposed to serve.

The banker in question, Robert Foran, helped the MTA “restructure” its debt in 2000 - a task even the Business Week article admitted added hundreds of millions to the MTA’s debt service.

It also reported that Bear Stearns earned tens of millions of dollars in underwriting fees for advising the MTA on the restructuring.

Now the “cash-strapped” MTA is rewarding Foran of Bear Stearns by appointing him to oversee its finances.

In the meantime, the MTA is considering another fare increase, on the heels of one that just happened this year.

The media will help the MTA hide its role as cash cow for Wall Street until the workers do what the Republic Doors and Windows workers in Chicago did in December 2008 — use their power to shake the money out of the banks.