MTA officials are locking horns with the Transit Workers Union over rules governing overtime and sick time. The MTA brass says employees have been abusing the system and costing the Authority $560 million annually; part of that big expenditure was caused by the 25% of bus and subway workers took more than two weeks worth of sick days last year. Now the MTA is assigning a task force to crack down on employees who abuse sick days. Of course, the union is up in arms about it.
"These bureaucrats, they’ve never done a day’s physical labor in their life," TWU Local 100 boss John Samuelsen tells the Post. "And they would faint if they had to work under the conditions that Local 100 members work under every day." Speaking to the Daily News, he fumed, "They demean their own workers publicly on a consistent basis, and they fail to acknowledge NYC Transit workers work in some of the most horrific conditions you can imagine. Several bus operators are assaulted every week, subway workers breathe in toxic fumes... We put our lives on the line to move the riding public, and when we get sick, the company tries to portray us as slackers."
But some high-profile incidents have revealed that some NYC Transit employees have in fact been on vacation while calling out sick. And one subway operator made the equivalent of what he would have earned in five days by just showing up for three days and then working overtime. The MTA says he called out for unpaid sick time the other two days, but because overtime kicks in after each eight-hour shift (not after 40 hours) the operator made his regular week's pay. And the cherry on top is that his replacement on the sick days was paid time-and-a-half!
MTA officials estimate that the OT belt-tightening will result in $22 million in savings this year, while the Authority faces a $400 million budget shortfall. Next year the MTA will try to save $60 million by reducing overtime, though that will require union consent, so get the popcorn ready.
