The cash-strapped Metropolitan Transit Agency may soon begin hiring welfare recipients for cleaning jobs in line with the city's Work Experience Program, which encourages employable individuals to work for the cash assistance and benefits they receive.
Nearly 200 MTA cleaners lost their jobs as part of the agency's series of doomsday budget cuts that required MTA chiefs to slash about 3,500 positions.
Should the MTA hire workers in partnership with the city's WEP, the benefits would be two-fold: The move would lower cleaning costs for the MTA as well as endow unemployment benefit recipients with skills to make them more marketable in the workplace and help them get off welfare.
"This is a program that has a proven track record of doing three things: providing low-cost cleaning help for the subway; providing job training to people who need it, and leading directly to full-time employment for many of the people who participate in the program," MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin told the Daily News.
Welfare recipients in the WEP filled cleaning positions with the MTA for nearly a decade before the previous MTA administration opted to cut the free labor in 2008, reports the News.
At the time, agency heads figured it would be fiscally cheaper because union-represented cleaners who helped train and supervise the WEP workers got paid an additional $1.70 an hour in connection with the program, reports the News.
