September 13, 2013 — Reports this week that the gap between rich and poor is at its widest since before the Great Depression offers the agencies and processing firms alike the chance to show the community they value their productive, loyal employees enough to get them safely to and from work.
The story of a man who lost an eye during his commute to work at a New Bedford fish-processing plant should give everyone pause.
Traveling to and from one's place of employment is, for the vast majority of SouthCoast residents fortunate enough to have jobs, a mundane task. Of course, everyone under the sun is subject to the swift, impartial hand of fate, but for the hundreds of immigrants estimated to be working in the waterfront's fish houses, the risk of hazard is ever-present.
A small survey taken by Bus Riders United found that none of the 30 Spanish-speaking seafood workers interviewed uses public transportation to make his or her daily commute.
Southeastern Regional Transit Authority Administrator Eric Rousseau said by telephone on Thursday that as much as he would like to serve those vulnerable fish cutters and packers — traveling the streets before dawn under the eye of desperate, unscrupulous predators who lay in the shadows to do them harm — the regional transit authority can't afford it. SRTA has only recently restored evening hours, which have yielded the ridership gains anticipated before the move, but "we don't have piles of money" with which to fund a 4-8 a.m. route running on the half-hour to serve the waterfront.
Read the full editorial at the New Bedford Standard-Times