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A group of the Big Apple’s most prominent labor leaders is getting behind a major transit union’s call for more cops on the subway — saying the system no longer feels safe and urging the city to protect its everyday “heroes.”

In a letter to Mayor de Blasio issued Sunday, reps for hundreds of thousands of workers who rely on public transit to get to the kind of jobs that kept the city running through the pandemic — including grocery store employees, retail workers, city employees, and, of course, transit workers — called for an increased police presence in the transit system “at least in the short term.”

“The reality is, right now many of our members don’t feel safe riding or working in mass transit. This is unacceptable,” the officials wrote.

“No one should be afraid to use these basic transit services, especially the heroic women and men in our ranks, who have sacrificed so much to keep the City going during one of its darkest hours. They have been riding day in and day out, and they deserve better,” it continued.

“You have rightly called our members heroes; now is the time to put your words to action and have their backs underground.”

The letter was signed by Mario Cilento of the New York AFL-CIO, Vincent Alvarez of the NYC Central Labor Council, District Council 37 President Henry Garrido, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union President Stuart Appelbaum, and others.

Subway crime rates dropped in March compared to the previous month, according to newly-released NYPD stats — but remain far higher than where they stood pre-pandemic.

There have also been many recent high-profile subway attacks — including a spate of straphangers being shoved into the tracks — that are even more noticeable with ridership down amid the pandemic.

“Some weeks, crime numbers are up and at intolerable levels; other weeks, the data looks better,” the letter reads. “But one thing remains the same – the system just does not feel as safe as it used to, or as safe as it could be.”

The union leaders said cops should be stationed at “the places where assaults, robberies and other incidents happen.”

“Stationing cops at the turnstiles helps no one,” they wrote. “We need extra police who are actually visible to riders to help deter crime.”

TWU Local 100 — the largest transit union in the city — has been pushing for greater police presence in the system for years, citing a spike in attacks on transit workers.

Subway conductor Terence Towler told The Post on Sunday that he’s been out of work since Feb. 7 dealing with the after-shock of an assault at Lexington Ave.-59th Street station.

An irate rider who had been preventing the train from leaving the station tried to yank Towler’s head through the window of the conductor’s cab — and wound up poking the six-year MTA veteran in the eye.

Cops were MIA at the time of the attack, and never caught the perp, Towler said. He expressed frustration that his alleged attacker was only wanted for harassment.

“I want to go back to work,” he said. “I’m a train conductor now. I want to be train operator and possibly go higher than that. I want to go far in transit. But I want my life to be taken seriously by the police department and my employer.”

Subway conductors like Towler aren’t the only MTA workers suffering. In December, station agent Kumar Narinder, 70, was bruised and bloodied after being shoved onto the tracks in Brooklyn.

“I was inches from the third rail,” Narinder said at the time.

Bus workers have also reported an increase in attacks. On New Years Day, bus driver Charline Alston was assaulted by a man who smashed her window and started punching her in the head.

“If this happened to a police officer, it’d be quick judgement: ‘Oh, we can’t have that,’” Towler remarked. “But it happens to us.”

The new union pressure on de Blasio comes after he batted away MTA leadership’s push for more cops on the transit system, which he claimed was “discouraging” people from returning to the subways and buses.

NYPD Transit Chief Kathleen O’Reilly echoed Hizzoner’s position in comments to the MTA board last week.

“What will hinder rider confidence is continued fearmongering,” O’Reilly said.

“It’s a disservice to New Yorkers to advance the narrative in crime is soaring in the subways, when it’s simply not the case.”

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