I need more sourcing that isn't "stuff I've read on forums" and the like to actually write about this, but I think there's a really good thread/blog post/etc to be done on Taylorism and the MTA.

The agency is (in)famous for its management-labor divide, which manifests in bad faith assumptions on both sides, acrimonious bargaining, etc. And I've gotta say, a lot of the conflict seems to revolve around distinctly Taylorist ecosystem of rules-based labor contestation

both insofar as work rules and roles become the lever with which American unions influence the mgmt of their workplaces given the Taylorist labor labors/mgmt manages divide, and insofar as a lot of worker discontent stems from the (sometimes draconian) enforcement of said rules.

In these regards, the agency seems to be the spitting image of a large Amercan industrial concern circa 1980 -- mutual distrust, a lack of much in the way of shared values/vision, all set on a backdrop of a threatening financial landscape.

Over a larger timeframe, these divides seem to have nontrivial impacts on the ecosystems of institutional knowledge that drive agency policy decisions: adversariality => low upper-lower contact and ideas-sharing => low visibility of more detail-oriented, or more ops-y problems.

The agency's delayed action on timers feel like examples 1, 2 and 3 of that behavior.

Anyway, I'm just spitballing here. As I said, something I'd enjoy exploring more (and something that falls in the IMO underresearched arena of US transit agency sociologies)

Yes, this, absolutely. There are sharp demographic disparities which intersect with the mgmt labor schisms at MTA. https://twitter.com/philipleff/status/1311771867099918336