The MTA’s job-cutting plan to save $1.6 billion will only add to the agency’s already exorbitant overtime costs, union leaders argued Wednesday.
“If you move to reduce operating staff, it’s going to skyrocket your overtime budget,” union rep John Samuelsen told his colleagues at the MTA’s monthly board meeting. “You can’t maintain a system in a state of good repair and reduce headcount and cut back on your overtime.”
The consultant-crafted “transformation” effort will cut 2,700 jobs from the 74,000-person agency, Chief Transformation Officer Anthony McCord said Wednesday — including 700 positions from rail and bus operations, where the MTA already faces scrutiny for its ballooning OT spending.
A total of 1,900 positions will be eliminated between April and the end of 2020, McCord said. He declined to say whether the losses would come from people who quit or retire, vacancies or lay-offs, and gave no indication as to which positions will be eliminated.
“We need to find $1.6 billion between now and the end of 2023,” McCord told board members.
But the specter of job cuts raised alarm bells for the board’s union membership.
“When I see 700 operational positions that could be identified as a reduction-in-force — to me, as a labor guy, it is mind-boggling to think how that can be achieved when we are so short-handed now and have so many issues currently with overtime,” said Vincent Tessitore, the board’s representative for Long Island Rail Road workers.
“It’s hard for me to understand, as an operations guy, how we’re not going to compromise customer service and safety … when were identifying that amount of positions,” he said.
Agency officials committed to reduce overtime expenses last year after The Post’s reporting showed they’d become a growing burden on the cash-strapped agency’s budget — $1.4 billion in 2018, compared to just $849 million in 2014.
An audit by former federal prosecutor Carrie Cohen cited low headcount as one cause of the spending surge.
Reached for comment, an MTA spokesman insisted any operations cuts would be from positions that do not directly impact service.
“We’re not going to target any positions that we feel are necessary for the efficiency of service. Those aren’t the jobs we want to cut,” spokesman Ken Lovett told The Post. “There are positions that can be reduced and not impact service and not impact overtime.”