As Jay Walder takes aim at the MTA’s labor costs, he and incoming TWU head John Samuelsen have engaged in a war of the words. On Wednesday, Walder called on the agency “to eliminate work that is no longer necessary.” He continued, “We must take this place apart to find effficiences that will make it strong…The frank reality is that the majority of our costs come from labor, and we need to find ways to be more productive.”
Samuelsen, on the other hand, defended the overtime his workers accrue and the work schedules of the Local 100. “Our position is: Years of mismanagement and neglect on the city and state level are not going to be compensated for off the backs of Local 100 members,” Samuelsen said. “If they move against Local 100 members with layoffs they are going to have a fight on their hands.”
At some point, the MTA is going to have to overhaul the authority’s internal structure from top to bottom to realize its economic efficiency. That will involve layoffs of redundant managers and the consolidation of agencies. It will also involve an elimination of rampant overtime and the loss of some union jobs. Both sides are going to feel some pain in order for the MTA to stay afloat. We’ll find out if management and the union leaders have the stomach for the consolidation or will simply spend months posturing as the rest of us have to pay.
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What Samuelsen calls “years of mismanagement and neglect on the city and state level” is a campaign of terror against the MTA and riders by the TWU-elected politicians who keep giving the union larger and larger pay and pension packages.
The MTA can’t afford to pay more because…it simply can’t afford to pay more; every last penny has gone to the union. I’d love to see “mismanagement and neglect” end; for that, the TWU must simply cease electing the same politicians and stop its own gravy train. But why would it do that? So the “mismanagement and neglect” will continue.
The MTA overhaul is dependent on these same issues- those pols screaming loudest for MTA reform are also blocking any real progress. Any meaningful decision, such as merging backoffice functions, is in the hands of Albany- and, indirectly, in the hands of the TWU.
Boris how are merging white collar 9-5 office jobs at all in the hands of the TWU? It is in the hands of Walder and him alone to stand up and say hey we have way too much management in the MTA.
In the past when the TA employed alot more workers than they currently do there was a title called trainmaster, there were only a handful of them in the system. These days with less overall employees the TA has no less than 7 superintendents to do what that one person used to do.
Please refer to Alon Levy’s response to Working Class in yesterday’s SAS entry “Walder eyes overtime, jobs as ways to save”:
“The MTA tried to merge NYCT with SIR as MTA Subways, and to merge MNRR with the LIRR as MTA Commuter Rail. In both cases, the state legislature blocked the move for political reasons.”
Perhaps this doesn’t answer the bureaucracy issue directly, but it clearly states what I believe as well- the times when Albany does something rational is very rare. Any major decisions pertaining to the MTA are in Albany’s control. And since the TWU is a major campaign contributor and voting block, while MTA top management is appointed and fired by Albany at will, the TWU has much more control over the MTA than the MTA does over the TWU.
Boris, if I’m not mistaken, the problem isn’t really the unions. The unions were never enthusiastic about the proposal, mostly for inertia reasons. But the MTA’s commuter rail merger, which needed Senate approval, had no Senate sponsor. The suburban politicians, such as Dean Skelos, were happy to just blame the MTA for the merger’s failure.
It appears that the opposition was focused in Long Island, where local boosters complained about local control. The Metro-North union quotes the Suffolk County MTA board member as saying “Each community deserves their own railroad… You would need to have separate leadership with people who know what is going on in that area.” The LIRR business boosters were negative as well. Skelos himself is from Long Island.
The MTA is ALREADY trying to merge its agencies’ back-office functions and doing it with classic MTA pizazz. A whole new organization with it’s own set of senior executives, its own fancy new digs, and under the guidance of a consulting company best known by its former name for having had instrumental involvement with ENRON. Welcome to the MTA BSC.
With a little luck, the money saved through this effort will add up to the money poured into it up front in, maybe, half a century. In the end it will have reduced the individual agency back office populations about as much as MTA Capital Construction has reduced the headcounts at the individual agencies Capital Program Management departments.(LOL)
Recently the MTA tried to get some MTA Bus College Point buses to layover in NYCT depots during the middle of the day to cut costs. However, the TWU appealed to the court and won and so the buses have to come all the way back to Queens and go all the way back to Manhattan in the evening. The next day the TWU blasted the MTA for it’s appeal for the contract, and said they(MTA) doesn’t understand the importance of saving money.
Proof please. Have never heard this story before, and it seems like the exact type of story that the post and daily news love.
That never made the news as far as I know. A few of my friends who are drivers at College Point said that some of the express runs had layovers at 126th Street depot during the middle of the day. Apparently this upset a few people. I didn’t know that the TWU even asked an arbitrator to over turn this, so College Point depot operators had to re-pick last week with those layovers taken out.
To Ben:
Maybe this is slightly off-topic here, but on what website is there a COMPLETE LIST of the coming “doomsday” service cuts?
Like, WHICH bus routes will be totally done away with?
I know that for subway routes, that’s the W and the Z, but I can’t find anywhere a list of the doomed bus routes.
The MTA BSC is similar to tje New york City timekeeping system. Exaclty this is the same company that took down enron and walder is using thre same company for his restructuring plans now we know where that is headed