Union chief says MTA Police having to check employee overtime is 'insulting'

The Long Island Rail Road’s top union boss is raising “serious concerns of safety and security” following the MTA’s decision to use its police department to help oversee overtime procedures among LIRR workers.

In a letter to Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Patrick Foye, Anthony Simon, general chairman of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers — the LIRR’s largest labor organization — called the use of MTA Police to help observe employee attendance practices to help control overtime “insulting and irresponsible.”

“These officers belong out in public fighting crime, combating fare evasion and serving the riding public, not going through the motions of observing employee attendance behavior,” Simon said.

Following Foye’s call last week for an investigation into the alarmingly high rates of overtime among some employees that was revealed in a recent Empire Center for Public Policy report, MTA Police have been visiting LIRR employee facilities this week — checking employee cards and observing the use of biometric finger touch identification systems.

“This is a waste of police resources and puts our entire system at risk, not to mention the extreme insult to our employees who do nothing but work when asked to by management,” Simon said in the letter.

Responding to Simon’s letter, MTA officials said Thursday that only a limited number of police officers, along with civilian employees, are randomly visiting facilities. Police are spending about 30 minutes of their shifts monitoring clocking-in and clocking-out procedures, but are otherwise on patrol, monitoring their radios, and able to quickly respond to emergencies, the MTA said.

“Civilians and MTA police are doing random checks of our facilities for the safety and security of our customers and employees, and to protect the taxpayers against potential abuse and excessive overtime,” Foye said. “This measure should be a welcome step — New Yorkers deserve to get what they pay for.”

John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, which represents MTA bus and subway workers, similarly decried the agency's decision to involve police in their probe as "idiotic" and a major blow to employee morale.

"Talk about disrespecting your employees. You send cops to places where criminality is occurring,” said Samuelsen, who likened MTA employee facilities to “modern day plantations.”

“Try getting productivity out of MTA workers that are under siege from armed police,” Samuelsen said.

Michael O’Meara, president of the MTA Police Benevolent Association, which represents MTA Police officers, did not respond to requests for comment.

The Empire Center, which put out the MTA employee payroll report that led to the agency’s overtime review, pointed out Thursday that the MTA Police “hasn’t exactly been skimping on its own employees’ overtime.” The average officer collected $34,932 in overtime and other extra pay above base salary last year — higher than LIRR employees, according to the Empire Center's report from public records. Police officers’ average total take-home pay of $131,959 was the highest of any MTA unit, according to the report.

“Given the rise in overtime and extra pay among MTA Police, perhaps management ought to assign LIRR workers to monitor the attendance and work hours of the cops who have now been assigned to monitor them,” Empire Center founder and research director Edmund J. McMahon said.

High overtime rates will be the subject of a special MTA Board meeting scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday at MTA headquarters in Manhattan. The report by the Empire Center, a nonprofit based in Albany, revealed that the authority's top earner in 2018, LIRR chief measurement officer Thomas Caputo, made $344,147 in overtime last year on top of his base salary of $117,499. Six of the highest-paid employees at the MTA last year worked for the LIRR.

The authority’s handling of the controversy has deepened a growing rift between MTA management and LIRR unions, who have complained in recent months about laborers being shown little respect or appreciation even as they work hard to reverse persistent service problems throughout the LIRR, which carried nearly 90 million riders last year — a modern record. LIRR union employees’ last contract lapsed last month.

The last major clash between the railroad’s labor force and MTA management brought the nation’s largest commuter railroad to the brink of a shutdown in 2014. Three days before workers vowed to go on strike, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo brokered a deal to keep the railroad running.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.