Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
MTA jobs are a track to generational wealth for Black New Yorkers – but executives remain predominantly white
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Feb 28, 2023
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Stephen Nessen/Gothamist
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Feb 28, 2023
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Some of Donald E. Yates’ fondest memories are of riding the bus around Queens in his youth. While he loved the trips through different neighborhoods, he was most enamored with the bus driver — his father, who gave him snacks and sometimes took him bowling after a shift.
The elder Yates, also named Donald, was a single dad who raised his son on an MTA salary. He was one of thousands of Black New Yorkers who in recent decades carved a path to the middle class through the reliable pay and pension benefits offered to transit workers.
“My father was my most favorite person in the world back then,” Yates, now 54, said.
Like many Black transit workers of that era, Yates' father was never promoted higher than a bus operator. But the job allowed him to save money. After raising his son in Mitchell Lama housing in Jamaica, Queens, he bought his own home in Cambria Heights in 1990 for $130,000. It was a fixer-upper with a good amount of land that he’d spotted on his route, the Q84.
Yates followed in his father’s footsteps. When he was 25, he joined the MTA as a bus driver. And he also went on to buy his own home: a two-story house in Woodhaven, Queens, 10 miles away from his dad’s place. He even met his wife on the job. She also drives buses for the MTA.
“You can buy a home with Transit, you can earn the money, you can save the money and creditors will give you the credit to purchase your home because you work for Transit,” Yates said. “They know it's a guaranteed payment, so they're gonna loan you the money to buy a home. It's like the middle class.”
Yates is one of more than 71,000 MTA workers, roughly 40% of whom are Black. And at New York City Transit, which runs the subways and buses, 47% of the workforce is Black.
But Black transit workers in New York City also hit a ceiling that persists into the present. There’s never been a Black chair of the MTA. And only 17% of New York City Transit executives are Black, according to agency statistics.
When Gothamist asked Janno Lieber, the MTA's current chair and CEO, about the racial disparity between the workforce and management, Lieber cited several hires on his watch.
“I don’t like to talk about our team in demographic terms, but since you’re insisting on it, I will,” Lieber said.
“I’m very proud of the diversity and most of all the caliber of the people, I don’t know the stats that you’re talking about and I don’t have any comment on what my predecessors or anybody else may have done,” he added.
Yates was able to climb the ranks through Transport Workers Union Local 100, where he now works as a vice president representing the agency’s bus workers in Manhattan and the Bronx.
When Yates was 11 years old, his father took him to the picket line of the 1980 transit workers' strike and coached him on the fight for higher pay. It’s a lesson that stuck with Yates for the rest of his life.
“So I had like an understanding of what labor was back then, or at least fighting back, what that meant,” Yates said.
The leaders of TWU Local 100, which represents a majority of the MTA’s employees, are more reflective of the workforce. Richard Davis, the union’s current president, is Black and is also the group’s third Black leader.
The MTA has had some Black managers get close to the top.
There’s Demetrius Crichlow, the current senior vice president of subways, who was appointed to the role in 2021.
Ronnie Hakim, the former head of subways and buses who later served as the MTA's managing director, one of the agency's top positions, has Haitian ancestry, according to an MTA spokesperson.
Then there’s Darryl Irick, who like Yates came from a family of bus drivers and rose to a management position. Irick worked for the MTA for 33 years and retired in 2019 after serving as the agency’s head of buses for eight years.
Yates recalled that his relationship with Irick was sometimes contentious — and said that having a Black executive at the agency didn’t keep racial tensions from erupting.
“I actually, one time called him a racist,” Yates said. “I called him a racist because it was service cuts and he was the manager of the Department of Buses at the time, and they were service cuts that were really impacting the Washington Heights area and not necessarily the downtown area.”
As for the next generation, Yates now has kids of his own, and despite his clashes with management, he’d still recommend they work for the MTA. But, he said, they’re not interested.
“They're not, they don't look for the security, the pension, they're looking for the quick dollar,” he said.
Yates says there will be a place for his kids at the MTA — if they ever want the job.
Tagged
queens
transportation
Stephen Nessen
Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Wind, rain, maybe snowflakes: It's about to get chilly around NYC
The weather's going from almost-spring-like to not-so-much. Welcome to November.
By
Giulia Heyward
Published Nov 11, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. ET
NYC sanitation supervisors keep speeding on the job, data shows
The DSNY workers who oversee trash collection and issue tickets rack up hundreds of automated speed camera tickets each year, a Gothamist analysis shows.
By
Liam Quigley
News
NYC sanitation supervisors keep speeding on the job, data shows
The DSNY workers who oversee trash collection and issue tickets rack up hundreds of automated speed camera tickets each year, a Gothamist analysis shows.
By
Liam Quigley
Mamdani’s redevelopment plan for NYCHA complex in Chelsea spills into DSA
By
Elizabeth Kim
NYC bars and restaurants say they're struggling and may raise prices
By
Catalina Gonella
Jersey City mayor names new public safety director, police chief
By
Michael Sol Warren
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .