The Metropolitan Transit Authority marked National Transit Employee Appreciation Day on Monday to honor its 70,000 employees who help the city run.

“They worked through the COVID pandemic, and they show up every day for New Yorkers,” Janno Lieber, chair and CEO of the MTA said at a news conference. 

And on this morning, the big bosses showed up for them - with MTA big wigs doing their jobs. Lieber pitched in with cleaning.  

“I heard from the cleaners that they had been instructed to write me up for a violation,” he joked.  

But it was hard to celebrate without acknowledging safety.  According to the Transport Workers Union Local 100, assaults against MTA New York City transit workers have gone from seven assaults per month in 2019 to 13 assaults in February 2024 across buses and subways.    

“We are just not going to accept it, we are going to push back in every way starting with what the governor put together last week, which is meetings with the DAs to say we have got to figure out a way to stop letting people who attack subway and transit employees come in and out of the criminal justice system,” Lieber said. 

He also says more than 1,000 NYPD officers will patrol the subway system along with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s SCOUT teams – helping those suffering from acute and extreme mental illness.   

Courtney Williams, who has been a conductor with the MTA for almost 21 years, was once homeless. Today he was lauded as one of the MTA's best conductors. 

“9/11 went down, we were out here moving.  The hurricanes, even the earthquakes, the snowstorms that you have that nothing moves - we are out here ... those are the times you hear customers say thank you, other than that, nothing else,” Williams told News 12 New York. 

The MTA says it will continue to honor transit workers throughout the year as it always has.