Expert: MTA stinks on OT
Bad management caused the MTA to bust its overtime budget last year, says a consultant who shot down allegations of widespread overtime abuse in the cash-strapped agency.
The findings were published Thursday in a report by Carrie Cohen, a former Manhattan assistant U.S. attorney the Metropolitan Transportation Authority hired in May amid concerns about ballooning overtime.
MTA overtime jumped by $119 million, or 16%, from 2017 to 2018, the Empire Center for Public Policy reported a month before Cohen was hired..
The Empire Center’s report irked MTA board member Larry Schwartz. He demanded a special investigation into the “constant” abuse of overtime.
But Cohen did not find that rampant abuse of overtime. Instead, her report found that outdated timekeeping systems and poor oversight by managers led to employees receiving overtime even when it was avoidable.
MTA spokesman Max Young said the agency is already working to install a new agencywide timekeeping system.
Overtime was also pushed up by the MTA’s $836 million Subway Action Plan, Cohen found. A hiring freeze last year required MTA managers to lean on existing employees to complete critical work to pull the subway system from a state of crisis.
Union-friendly work rules exacerbated the overtime explosion, Cohen said. Her report highlighted a medley of costly agreements with the transit worker unions — including one rule that lets overtime be calculated daily instead of weekly. Also she noted that train operators are paid for “dead-heading,” or the time spent traveling back to the station where they began their shift.
“It should be emphasized that overtime payments such as these are not fraudulent but are authorized by work rules agreed to by management and labor,” the report said. “Whether changing those work rules through collective bargaining should be prioritized is an important question for MTA leadership to consider.”
Transport Workers Union International President John Samuelsen said the report vindicated his members, and called on Schwartz to resign from the MTA board for “criminalizing” transit workers.
“This problem festered and grew under his watch as the finance chair of the MTA board, and yet he still found a way to blame the workers,” said Samuelsen.
He added, “Now it comes out in the wash that the real problem with the MTA is its own gross incompetence.”
Schwartz would not apologize for raising the overtime issue, and said he’s unconvinced widespread fraud isn’t a problem.