MTA makes pledge to reduce excessive overtime costs

A Long Island Rail Road engineer getting an entire extra day's pay for operating an electric train and a diesel one in the same shift. An MTA Bridges and Tunnels employee doubling the size of his pension by loading up on overtime before retiring. An air conditioner somehow taking twice as long to be repaired in one bus depot than another.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said all of those are real examples of wasteful use of overtime in the transit agency, which Thursday vowed to rein in employees and significantly reduce overtime costs over the next two years - part of its effort to find ways to fill an $800-million budget deficit.

The chairman of the Long Island Rail Road's largest union took issue with the MTA making a villain of union work rules, saying it was unfair of the agency to blame labor for its own "mismanagement."

"I don't see anybody taking overtime that should not be taking overtime," said Anthony Simon, general chairman of the United Transportation Union. "They call us, and we work."

The MTA, which has about 65,000 employees, spends $560 million each year on overtime - enough to pay the salaries of about 7,000 full-time workers, agency officials said. The overtime figure amounts to 13 percent of the MTA's total payroll.

The agency plans to cut that figure by $22 million this year and $60 million next year, officials said, through a combination of better management controls and collective bargaining with unions, whose contracts and work rules regulate how overtime is paid.

LIRR officials said reform of work rules would be part of upcoming labor discussions but could not say which rules would be targeted for change.

SEE PHOTOSLIRR trains and commuters through the years

Aside from working with unions, among the measures the MTA plans to take is better enforcement of abuses of sick leave, which forces the MTA to fill shifts at time-and-a-half; prevention, through better scheduling, of so-called "mega-shifts" of up to 32 paid hours; and the creation of specialized task forces in areas where overtime costs are highest.

MTA officials said there is only so much they can do to control overtime costs without the unions' cooperation. In general, overtime opportunities are given by seniority, allowing the same employees to load up on overtime.Any time worked beyond eight hours in a day is paid in time-and-a-half.

A number of "outdated" work rules also hamper the MTA's efforts to cut costs, MTA chief operating officer Charles Monheim said. That includes the LIRR's so-called "co-mingling" rule. Under that rule, if an engineer operating an electric train has to switch to a diesel train some time during his shift for any reason, he is entitled to an extra day's "penalty" pay.

LIRR President Helena Williams said all the railroad's 400 engineers are certified to drive both diesels and electrics and there is no significant difference in operating the different trains.

"Two days' pay for one day's work, same tour of duty. And that's just one example of very cumbersome work rules," said Williams, who added that the LIRR works hard to prevent such situations. "We can't get it down to zero, but we've made some substantial reductions."

The amount of money the LIRR paid in "co-mingling" penalty fees went from $867,000 in 2008 to about $600,000 in 2009, railroad officials said.

Since creating an overtime task force in 2008, the LIRR has reduced overtime costs more than 25 percent. Last year, it paid about $105 million in overtime, and it has budgeted for $87 million this year, officials said.

Simon said he did not believe there are significant overtime abuses and that he had yet to hear from LIRR management about negotiating a new contract. The union's contract expires next month.

Areas of concern

Four factors MTA officials say lead to overtime costs:

• High absenteeism

Employees can bank sick days indefinitely and management is limited in its ability to investigate whether an employee is actually sick when he or she takes a day off. Unscheduled absences force the MTA to fill shifts with employees on overtime.

• Inflexible work rules

Various work rules guarantee extra pay for no extra work. One example is an LIRR rule that pays engineers for an extra day if they operate an electric train and a diesel train during the same shift.

• Padding pensions

As employees near retirement, many load up on overtime to raise the salary by which their pension amount is calculated, the MTA says.

• Lax management

MTA officials said some managers aren't focused on limiting overtime costs and allow low productivity that leads to overtime.