Project Description

Given the size and complexity of urban transit in New York City and the importance of a high performing workforce to its successful functioning, NYCLMIS, housed within the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center, proposes to work with the University Transportation Research Center to identify workforce issues that will have an impact on the urban transit workforce in the MTA service area and develop recommendations to address these issues. The research questions guiding the study are as follows:

• How do the labor and management of New York City’s transit system define their workforce challenges? How, if at all, do they differ from the workforce challenges noted by the U.S. Department of Transportation? This includes an examination of the three main issues mentioned above ‐‐ aging workforce, the competition for workers, and the skill sets needed to respond to changes in the industry. Attention will be given to similarities and differences in labor and management problem definitions.
• What additional workforce issues uniquely apply to the New York City metropolitan area’s urban transit workforce? These could relate to some of the areas examined by the Blue Ribbon Panel – organizational culture, employee availability and labor management relations – or others.
• How is the industry addressing the issues identified? How are the management workforce issues being addressed? What role do labor management relations play in preparing/upgrading the organized transit workforce?