Wedding Blues For One MTA Station Agent
The end of the line for hundreds of MTA workers inches closer & closer with each passing day. With a budget deficit that continues to eat away at the MTA, the much maligned transit agency has had their hand forced by a city & state that continues to show no desire to come up with sustainable funding solutions.
The prospect of having no job has really hit home for one worker in particular, Jhesky Vega. Mr. Vega is a station agent who will work his last shift on Wednesday. As if losing his job was not bad enough, it happens at a time when he & his fiancee were preparing for their October wedding in Puerto Rico. Pete Donohue of the New York Daily News has more in this report from Sunday:
There’s no good time to get laid off from work – but for token booth clerk Jhesky Vega, the timing couldn’t be worse.
Vega and his fiancée were in the midst of planning their October wedding in Puerto Rico when he received a pink slip from NYC Transit last week.
Vega, 31, will work his last shift Wednesday.
“I’m feeling lost and dazed,” the Queens man said. “I’m walking around like a zombie.”
Vega is among about 450 station agents getting laid off or reassigned, despite their expectations that their civil-service positions granted life-long job security.
To the very end, many agents believed they might be spared from the budget ax.
Veteran workers assured younger colleagues the MTA always cried wolf, Vega said, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s fiscal woes proved too severe.
“The older clerks said, ‘It’s never going to happen.’ … And it actually did,” Vega said. And while he’ll file for unemployment and look for another job, he knows how little work is available.
“How am I going to get the money for the wedding?” he fretted. “My girlfriend already put a deposit on the dress. I feel like my gut’s being ripped out.”
Click here for the complete report.
My condolences go out not only to Jhesky Vega & all of the workers being laid off but to the loved ones of these workers as well. I am sure the New York Daily News could do stories like this on all ofthe workers who are losing their jobs.
Back in the day, getting a job with the MTA was considered something big to shoot for as the pay was good & it offered a legitimate chance at a long career. However nowadays, the harsh reality is that you could bust your ass for them for years & be out the door the very next day.
While the financial woes of the MTA are not all their fault, I do find it completely disheartening & disgusting how the blue-collar workforce of the MTA is the first to get pinched during these tough times, yet the redundant layers of management continue to stay the course. Seriously, this just not right!
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Comments
This is a shame, I feel for Mr. Vega, his fiancee, and all the city workers who are being left out in the cold. To give your job 100% and feel like a city job like this is secure and then be given the boot as soon as money woes appear is disheartening. Why not cut the fat cats on top who are stealing the riders blind, who are mismanaging funds, and who did who knows what with the $2Million surplus they had a few years ago.
Layoff those guys, not the little guys who need these jobs to support their family. And people like Jay Walder, who has an interest in seeing these workers gone so the automated smart card can come out (which he is on the consulting board for and probably holds stock)–he disgusts me. I hope somebody layoffs his wife and children someday and that he gets thrown off for conflict of interest.
[…] facing many transit workers. My last entry on the topic was two days ago when I wrote about how Jhesky Vega lost his job as he & his fiancee were preparing for their October wedding in Puerto Rico. In today’s […]