Although the MTA is still planning on laying off 680 administrative workers later this year in an effort to save $65 million annually, a report in amNew York today alleges that the authority will not be enacting a 10 percent pay cut as was originally planned. Heather Haddon reports that the MTA was able to “cut expenses to avoid the $49 million pay reduction.” While union officials responded as union officials will to this news, I’m left wondering about the accounting. The total package of service cuts will, for instance, save New York City Transit $77.6 million in annual reductions. As much as I don’t like to advocate for cutting salaries, I’d much rather see Transit enact just $28.6 million worth of cuts and have those administrators take their pay cuts than suffer through the upcoming service cuts.
Report: No pay cuts for MTA admins
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Anybody that knows anything about the way the MTA runs it’s business knew that these cuts would never happen. The cuts would have meant that the excessive amount of managers would have had to take cuts and that would never happen.
This kind of thing does make it hard for transit activists to seriously support the MTA. I’m so glad that eliminating the Q74 has helped the administrators to hang on to that $10-30K per year!
Were they supposed to get raises that have been canceled? Because if the MTA Is going to ask for Union employees to take a hit while they don’t have the chutzpah to take it to their (non-Union) management employees (who can’t even organize/strike against changes in working conditions or benefits), I suspect that the already-frosty relations will get worse.
Seriously, much of MTA’s problems with TWU et al is a mutual feeling that the other “side” is acting in bad faith. I have to think that choices like this will just reinforce that belief.
The TA has no reason to negotiate with the unions in good faith and they haven’t even attempted a good faith negotiation in many years. The taylor law is a very management friendly law and the TA abuses it more than any of the other agencies.
Walder should have all of the many many managers in the MTA take a 25% pay cut BEFORE even attempting to take away a court awarded and backed up raise from the rank and file that actually make the system work 24/7.
A 25% cut is pretty steep. Try to implement that, and those managers would likely leave – hopefully without sabotaging the system first. Their procedures and recordkeeping are likely to be so complex and unorganized that they need to keep the only guys that understand it. A new person off the street may not be able to figure anything out without these veterans explaining it to them.
I’m not in a position to judge their pay versus their work, but the consequences of a pay cut can be signficant.
Even a 10% pay cut at the same time as layoffs would probably not be a wise move. Even with service cuts, administrative functions probably aren’t reduced much if at all.
The layoffs are presumably coming in place of the pay cuts.
Yeah…. it makes more sense to fire 680 managers (preferably hand-picked as the least useful) than to do an “across-the-board pay cut”. Those just demoralize people and cause the best ones to leave. This causes the best ones (the ones who are worth it) to stay and the worst ones to leave.
So the MTA is doing the right thing here.
I think sacking 680 managers should be a sufficient show of good faith. The TWU leadership, being idiots, probably won’t.
you are assuming all administrative workers are managers.
The original announcement of the 10% salary cut included a 3 month delay in implementing it, precisely to give the MTA time to come up with an equivalent payroll cost reduction, i. e. administrative employee layoffs, now imminent. No one with the slightest ability to read between the lines could possibly be suprised to learn that the 10% salary cut was never going to happen.
I *believe* it has been 2+ years for admin since raise was received (well 1 if you count a retroactive raise)and much longer since managers received a raise—yes essentially wages have been frozen.
All the long term talent would leave if 10% went through—to protect their pensions. It would literally be a brain drain. Something similar happened in the early 80s when there was a change in the pension and look how the system was then.
Can you back up what you are saying? Whenever the hourly employees get a raise the managers get a little more that is the way it has always worked. They only go a few years if the union does.
“Anon” is correct. There have been plenty of years in which unionized employees have gotten raises and managers haven’t, and managers haven’t gotten a raise in at least two years. (By the way, not every non-unionized employee at NYCT is a manager. There are plenty of people in analyst titles and such who are non-represented.)
David
Anon is correct. Plus, a lot of us aren’t eligible for overtime pay, regardless of how many hours we work.
Of course, it would also help if I spelled “administrator” correctly.
The MTA has layers of managerial fat. There are useless employees there. Let’s just say that I am very familiar with certain circumstances there.