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In response to an overnight arson attack that injured a train conductor, New York City Transit workers stopped work Thursday morning to file safety complaints, causing major disruptions to subway operations.

The raid happened around 3:40 a.m. on a southbound A train in Brooklyn. During the morning rush hour, workers staged the walkout at the 207th Street station on the A line and the 168th Street station on the A and C lines in Manhattan. According to two transportation officials familiar with the situation, workers refused to perform their assigned duties, leading to the disruptions.

Union leaders refused to call the service disruption a protest. Workers filled out the safety forms, called the Safety Dispute Resolution Form, through their representatives, said Richard Davis, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, which represents city subway and bus workers. The forms assure workers that the tracks are safe to travel on. The delays occurred because employees were waiting for forms to be approved by managers, Mr. Davis said.

But Metropolitan Transportation Authority transportation leaders called the union members' move a hidden work stoppage that ultimately failed to address their concerns. At a separate news conference, Richard Davey, president of the MTA division that operates the subway, called the morning disruptions “unacceptable.”

“The union leadership decided to stage some kind of walkout charade that impacted a few hundred thousand commuters in New York today,” he said, adding, “They have assured me that there will be no more behavior.”

Thursday's attack sparked long-simmering complaints that the MTA, the state agency that runs the transportation system, has not done enough to keep workers safe.

In recent weeks, several public transit workers have been attacked while on the job, prompting union leaders to call for more transit workers to be hired at stations. On February 14, a train station worker suffered a fractured eye socket when a man who had followed her across a platform hit her. In another episode, a conductor was reportedly hit in the face with a tennis ball.

In a news release, Mr. Davis said employees were deeply concerned for their safety. “We need better protection now before we lose one of our own.”

In the attack, which occurred early Thursday, a conductor, Alton Scott, was attacked while on duty at the Rockaway Avenue station on the A line along Fulton Street in Brooklyn, according to a news release from Local 100. Mr Scott, 59, who has worked for the authority for 24 years, was making “routine observations” from the cab window of a train when he was attacked, it said. He was taken to Brookdale Hospital Medical Center where he received 34 stitches.

According to police, Mr. Scott was in stable condition as of Thursday evening. There have been no arrests in the case and the investigation is continuing, police said.

In response to the attack, union leaders said they had initiated a “Section 1.9 Complaint” in their contracts, a process that allows them to make more formal safety recommendations.

“Nearly being killed is a clear and immediate danger, and we are enforcing that contract policy and moving to the higher level now,” said John Chiarello, a union official and safety director.

In a statement Thursday, John Samuelson, president of Transport Workers Union International, which represents 150,000 workers in sectors such as airlines, railroads and transit industries, criticized Janno Lieber, the MTA's chairman and chief executive

Mr. Samuelsen said the attack on Mr. Scott was a “horrific example of the epic, decades-long failure” of the MTA and Mr. Lieber “to protect public transit workers.”

At a news conference, Mr. Lieber praised police for quickly arriving at the scene of Mr. Scott's attack and highlighted the MTA's recent efforts to increase security on the transit system.

“We try to be innovative and try a lot of different things,” Mr. Lieber said. “This is an innovation MTA”

Public transit officials recently launched a pilot program that will introduce metal platform barriers to prevent riders from falling onto subway tracks, and they are in the process of installing surveillance cameras in every subway car, among other measures . About 1,000 of the system's approximately 6,500 cars are equipped with cameras.

Concerns about transit worker safety aren't just limited to New York City.

According to a recent study by the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that conducts economic and social policy research, assaults on transportation workers across the country have tripled in the last 15 years. Even if the numbers are increasing, it is most likely an undercount, the report says. The researchers found that attacks on public transit workers in New York increased from a three-day period in 2008 to an increase of every 1.4 days in 2022.

Lindiwe Rennert, who authored the report, said that public transport workers – partly because they are very accessible to the public – have become the focus of people's growing discontent and distrust of authority figures in government and society.

In December, the Biden administration proposed a general policy to address “significant and persistent security risks at the national level related to assaults on public transit workers.” The measure stipulates, among other things, that transport companies must assess potential dangers and develop possible solutions.

According to the city, reports of crimes on New York's transit system have increased 13 percent this year compared to the same time in 2023. According to police, authorities have counted six attacks on subway workers as of February 25, compared to five last year. In response to the spike in crime in January, Mayor Eric Adams ordered the deployment of an additional 1,000 uniformed officers on public transit.

Over the past two years, state and city leaders have launched several initiatives to combat crime in the metro, including additional overtime for police officers and the involuntary removal of severely mentally ill homeless people.