The MTA says employee abuse of the Family and Medical Leave Act has gotten so egregious that brazen shenanigans like this happen: In February, 62-year-old Giovanni Bonanno, a bus dispatcher on Staten Island, allegedly booked airline tickets to Florida and went on a little *cough cough* vacation a month later. Every day during his trip, Bonanno called out sick before his shift was supposed to start, telling a supervisor he was taking "a Family and Medical Leave Act day." Now he's been forced into an early retirement, but his wife insists her husband is just a patsy.
"This whole thing is about politics and someone in the MTA is not reputable," Marjorie Bonanno tells the Daily News. "Giovanni got sick of the game-playing so that's why he chose to retire, not because he did anything wrong." But the MTA says Bonanno's behavior is all too common, and many employees exploit the MTA's Family and Medical Leave program, which requires workers "to provide documentation from a physician, nurse, physical therapist or other health care provider that they or an immediate family member have a qualifying condition."
"This kind of blatant abuse of the system costs the MTA millions of dollars each year and ... we will go to whatever lengths necessary to crack down on the minority of our employees who break the rules," MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said in a statement. 9% of bus division workers are enrolled in the program citywide, but on Staten Island almost 20% of bus division workers participate in the Family and Medical Leave program. Of course one mustn't assume Staten Islanders are lazier than others; maybe they just have big, sick families.
