MTA workers at Linden yard say the culture at Linden yard and the agency’s official response to their concerns fit into a larger pattern of increasing hostility toward immigrants and people of color in this majority-minority city. | Getty Images At rail shop in Brooklyn, Trump stickers, accusations of racism and harassment

On January 3, 2019, two Muslim subway workers returned to their MTA maintenance shop in Brooklyn to find Trump 2020 stickers plastered to their toolboxes.

The implication of the act seemed clear.


“To me those Trump stickers [imply] that we are immigrants and we don’t belong,” wrote Zameer Khan, a track equipment maintainer, in a memo recounting his experience at the Linden yard facility in Brooklyn. “We should be sent back to where we came from. We all know how Mr. Trump is against immigrants and he want all immigrants deported.”

As much as New York City fancies itself a bastion of multicultural liberalism, in recent years, it has seen an uptick in bias-related crimes. MTA workers at Linden yard say the culture there and the agency’s official response to their concerns fit into a larger pattern of increasing hostility toward immigrants and people of color in this majority-minority city — and they see the Trump presidency as a catalyst.

They complained to one of their supervisors, Jake Liberovich, about the stickers. His response, they felt, left something to be desired.

“Write a f-----g complaint. I’m not a policeman,” he told them. “What the f--- can I tell you?”

Liberovich, in an interview, confirmed that’s “exactly” what happened.

“I told them, ‘Make it official,’ because I’m not going to police who’s putting something on their toolboxes — it’s not exactly my job,” he said in an interview with POLITICO last week. He also said discrimination was nonexistent in his department.

Khan and his colleagues disagree.

“Trump and his administration's acceptance of Bigotry has made it ok for his supporters to Abase, Demean and Discriminate against Muslims , Immigrants, People of color and last but not least Women,” wrote Khan in an email to POLITICO last week. “It has gotten so bad that it has almost, if not became a norm. It is happening in our Workplace, on the Media, at Schools you name it. The sad thing is, not enough is being done to put a stop to this and prevent this from happening.”

For the past year, Khan and several of his colleagues have sought redress for a culture in their corner of Linden yard they describe as rife with “cronyism” and discrimination against workers of color. In a thick portfolio of memos they have sent to New York City Transit’s equal employment opportunity office and shared with POLITICO, they describe a nearly all-white band of supervisors trying to force them to do overtime, when there are no emergencies and other workers are willing to go in their place. They describe being assigned the least desirable jobs, including bathroom cleaning duties — duties from which white employees appear exempt. They describe complaining to superiors and then suffering retaliation. New York City Transit’s equal employment opportunity office, they say, has provided little relief.

“The MTA is committed to ensuring that the workplace is free from unlawful harassment and discrimination,” said the MTA’s chief diversity officer, Michael Garner, in a statement. “As such, we have policies prohibiting discriminatory behavior, as well as other forms of inappropriate workplace behavior. We take these allegations seriously and are investigating them thoroughly.”

Linden yard, where Khan and his colleagues work, is one of the largest maintenance yards in the subway system. Track equipment maintainers like Khan repair payloaders and cranes and hand tools. They build railroad tracks, too.

Khan and his colleagues say the problems with their supervisors began last October, shortly after they’d started their new job assignment there. Khan, 32, has worked for the MTA since 2009. Sharaz Basdeo, his 33-year-old colleague, has worked there since 2012.

Both had understood that in their new crew, they would have the opportunity to work overtime and earn extra pay. They understood that under certain circumstances, like emergencies, overtime would be mandatory. But they were taken aback one week in early October when a supervisor, Paul Sammons, demanded that they work scheduled overtime the coming Saturday, even though both had family obligations and other workers were willing to do the job.

Basdeo had been planning to take his daughter apple-picking. Khan’s wife, who had suffered several miscarriages, was pregnant again and he had to take her to the doctor.

Sammons insisted. They refused. They say a year of retaliation and threatening behavior ensued — on the part of Sammons and on the part of Howard Brown, who is African American and was their only supervisor of color.

“I am not going to go back and forth with you guys,” Brown told them one day later that month, following another confrontation about workplace rules, Basdeo and Khan say. “I’m letting you guys know I’m coming for you.”

“I felt like my life was in danger… I genuinely felt like my safety was at risk,” testified Khan in a later memo recounting the incident.

Neither Sammons nor Brown responded to requests for comment.

Soon, Basdeo and Khan found found themselves “consistently” being sent to do roadwork, often in the “freezing cold” weather, said Khan. On the weekend, when they did overtime, they were routinely assigned the least desirable jobs, like working with the wet saw, whose fumes would burn their eyes and make it difficult to breathe. They noticed that their white colleagues seemed curiously exempt from bathroom cleaning duties.

“Are white employees superior to colored employees?” wrote Basdeo, Khan, and two other colleagues, Peter Peña and Aehsanullah Hashimi, in April. “Is that the reason why they aren’t assigned cleaning jobs.”

Peña and Hashimi were also tired of being referred to as “fluffers," a term used by the pornography industry to refer to someone who arouses male actors before they appear on-screen.

In January of this year, Peña told MTA higher-ups that his supervisor, Liberovich, had been sexually harassing him.

Liberovich had taken to pushing Peña’s head downward in a motion that simulated oral sex, Peña said. He allegedly did this in front of other workers. He called Peña a “fluffer” — in front of workers, and in front of supervisors Sammons and Brown, who allegedly didn’t bat an eye.

“I do not feel comfortable at work and do not want to be treated like this,” wrote Peña in a memo to the equal employment opportunity office in January.

He said some of his supervisors asked him to withdraw the complaint, but he wouldn’t.

Liberovich had started calling his colleague, Hashimi, “Fluffer No. 2," Hashimi said in a memo.

“I told him that was disgusting,” Hashimi wrote. He did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview, Liberovich, a Russian immigrant, said Hashimi and Peña were just making stuff up, and that he was the real victim.

“I’m 59 years old. I’m a grandfather of two. I’m going to do that stupid stuff?” he said.

Hashimi, Peña and their colleagues, he added, were “bullying management.”

Asked why, Liberovich said, “Because I’m Jewish and they are Muslim, that’s one of the main reasons.”

Peña is Catholic. Khan said he had no idea Liberovich was Jewish until asked for comment about his remarks.

“If we have a [vendetta] against him because he is Jewish what about the rest of supervision and management that we wrote letters against,” Khan wrote in an email to POLITICO.

Sharaz Basdeo

Ultimately, Liberovich said he was transferred to the MTA equivalent of the Department of Education’s “rubber room” — where employees under investigation sit in purgatory, and then to a different rail yard. He was then pressured to retire early, he says.

Brown, according to Basdeo, was transferred to another yard pending the outcome of an investigation.

Even as their supervisors have borne down on them, the supervisors themselves seemed to flout the rules. Basdeo provided photos of a supervisor sleeping on the job and another working on his personal car at an MTA facility.

The photos have been shared with MTA higher-ups. It’s not clear what’s come of it.

“We do not provide information as to steps we are taking as we conduct our investigations in a confidential manner,” wrote an assistant vice president of investigations to Khan on May 17.

Eddie Yesiltepe, Basdeo’s and Khan’s representative with the Transport Workers Union, who has also complained of retaliation but declined to speak with POLITICO, responded with anger.

Decrying the “continued discrimination and harassment,” he urged an investigations official with the agency to act with more haste.

“Your office being understaffed is not the fault of the [members],” he wrote. “They deserve equality in the work place. I hope you will make it your priority to put this to [an] end.”

Basdeo and Khan say the stress of being targeted at work is seeping into their personal lives and want the MTA to step in and address the situation.

“The MTA is funded by taxpayer’s money, how would they feel if they found out the work environment employees are working in is inhumane and we are being treated like second-class citizens?” Basdeo wrote in a January memo to his union representative. “The public has the right to know about our working conditions, and I believe it’s my duty as a tax payer and an employee of New York City Transit to let them know my story.”