The MTA is nearing its financial endgame. As the Senate prepares to vote next week on the latest MTA funding proposal, the transit authority is moving ahead under the reasonable assumption that the plan will not pass and that the Doomsday budget will have to go into effect.
Yesterday, the agency unveiled details surrounding the grace period for stockpiled Metrocards. Today, we discuss a different issue — a hiring freeze. In anticipation of the looming financial crisis, the MTA has implemented an agency-wide hiring freeze. While no one has been fired yet, no new employees will be brought on, and positions left empty through attrition and retirement will remain empty.
“The executive director and CEO has instructed each of the agency presidents to have a hard hiring freeze, which means unless it’s an absolute emergency, no slot should be filled,” MTA Spokesman Jeremy Soffin said to NY1’s Bobby Cuza.
The decision was announced to the MTA’s agency presidents in a memo by CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander. The Post got its hands on that memo, and it is a memo familiar to many in today’s economy. In addition to a hiring freeze, the MTA is limiting all other kinds of employment-related activities. Take a look:
“A hiring freeze is effective immediately — Only offers that have already been made can remain in place.”
“Overtime — Additional overtime is not permissible unless it can be proved that it is required to meet scheduled service.”
“Purchases — If you have to even think about it, don’t do it.”
“Professional/Contractual Services — Please consider using existing staff wherever possible to replace professional and contractual services which cannot otherwise be delayed or deferred.”
“Excess Employees — Please carefully re-examine the levels of excess employees and also any reimbursable employees that are not currently matched with a reimbursable project.”
These specific directives are related to what Sander called a need to “do everything possible to conserve cash.” Things, folks, are not looking up for the MTA.
I know many advocates for transit in New York City believe employment to be the Achilles’ Heel of this giant bureaucratic mess. Countless studies have trumpeted the shocking number of redundant and inefficient workers in all ranks of the MTA, and as the agency is gearing up to cut staff, those protesting the service cuts would rather see personnel ranks slashed significantly first.
In the end, though, this is just another reminder about the pressures we should be applying to our State Senators. If Albany doesn’t come through — if this latest proposal, flawed as it is, fails — this memo from Sander will represent just the tip of an iceberg destined to sink transit in New York City.
5 comments
Thanks for sharing that memo. Its funny how just a few words can be so telling.
What’s a bit startling is that only now (April 24, 2009) the MTA executive team is putting forth a hiring freeze and other important cost saving messages. I wonder, exactly what have they been doing until now?
The real estate market seized in Q3 2007 (and MTA quarterly tax revenue fell by $100M – the canary in the coal mine). Then they only offered to NOT implement new services promised when fares went up. (Apparently no cuts were made). The bottom fell out of the ENTIRE ECONOMY in September 2008. The stock market fell by over one trillion dollars that month. Thousands of financial services jobs disappeared. Silence from the MTA.
Seven months later Sander asks people to stop using so much overtime?
Are you seeing this the same way? This region is in the second YEAR of crisis. There isn’t a business in the NY area that hasn’t cut costs to mission critical. Thousands of workers have been shed (going well beyond freezing new hires and slowing consultants). Banks are absorbing brokerages. Retail businesses are shuttering all over the city.
You conceded that there are ‘countless studies trumpeting the shocking number of redundant and inefficient workers in all ranks of the MTA’. Where are these in Sanders memo? It seems the MTA is late to this depression party big time.
I’m unsure if you are quoting Sander directly, but to me there is an utter lack of urgency or recognition of reality in the excepted language. “Please” don’t use consultants so often. “Please” examine excess employees. Is Sander afraid of his staff? What is keeping reality from sinking in?
Where I work the message is clear. Find 10% (period). Then find another 10%.
I’m beginning to think the Senate lunatics seeking a forensic audit were right.
Tough measures are available to government. Perhaps this is the end game Albany is playing (poorly)?
It worked for the airlines (union renegotiations and mergers); and it looks like its going to work for Detroit. Perhaps we should take this once in a lifetime opportunity and force the MTA into an orderly bankruptcy.
Give the agency the chance to truly shed the burden of years of largess with her administration and unions; renegotiate with bond holders; slay many sacred cows and shut down the fiefdoms; involve the private sector throughout the enterprise, roll up other agencies and deploy new technologies, etc.
Someone here must have a list of things to do!
The MTA has already been cutting down on hiring, expenses, etc. since well before the US economic meltdown. There are rarely outside hires, and some of the folks who retired are not even replaced internally. Just because it’s not written up in the NY Post does not mean it has not been happening.
One thing about this memo really sticks out in my mind. This directive is MTA-wide, which includes capital projects under MTACC as well as operational expenses. Now look at the fourth item regarding use of professional/contractual services. Pretty much all of the major Capital Construction projects (Second Ave Subway, 7-Extension, a scaled-down Fulton St. Transit Center) are investing heavily in consultants who are experts in tunnel boring, architecture, communications systems, etc. If it’s determined these projects can be “delayed or deferred” (and we know they can be delayed – they all are for some reason or another), what does that mean for the fate of these projects?
Looks like you’ve got some bad HTML just above the quote from the memo (in the sentence beginning “The Post”). For those readers looking for the link to the Post article, here it is.
Thanks for that, Scott. I fixed it.