At its meeting this morning, the MTA Board voted to move forward on a plan to raise fares and tolls while slashing the number of station agents employed across the city. As the MTA has both the legal right and the economic need to raise fares in 2011, the vote was both expected and contested with transit advocates and labor officials protesting outside.
At the meeting, CEO and Chairman Jay Walder put forward the MTA’s four-year budget plan. The authority does not plan to cut services further. However, to ensure that the budget stays on pace, the MTA will enact significant fare hikes in both 2011 and 2013 and will ask for major concessions from its employees.
To move forward with the fare hikes, the authority will host a series of citywide public hearings in September before voting on a final package of fare hikes in October. The authority will decide, based upon public input, whether to limited the unlimiteds or simply raise the fares a few dollars more. Only around three percent of all subway riders exceed the proposed limit of 90 trips in a 30-day period.
As part of the comprehensive plan — and the MTA’s four-year budget outlook — the authority also hopes to rein in work rules and labor spending that it says are out of control. With major union contracts expiring over the next few years, the authority will attempt to institute a wage freeze while curtailing overtime spending and benefit costs. Although labor unions called this a “fantasy agenda,” MTA CEO and Chairman Jay Walder is set on exacting productivity gains or wage controls on the unions. The MTA will also eliminate more than 3400 administrative positions, and the Board voted to dismiss 200 station agents today as well after complying with a judicial order to hold new public hearings on the proposal.
“The foundation of this [Four-Year] Plan is the most aggressive and comprehensive overhaul in the history of the MTA,” Walder said. “These actions have allowed us to hold true to our commitment regarding fare increases while maintaining the quantity and quality of service that New Yorkers rely on every day. The State’s ongoing fiscal crisis is one of many risks to the Plan, but with continued hard work and the participation of our labor unions I believe that this Plan can be achieved.”
Already, battle lines are being drawn, and TWU President John Samuelsen made the first charge. He criticized Walder’s $350,000 salary. “It’s utterly ridiculous,” Transport Workers Union Local 100 Samuelsen said. “It’s hypocritical, and it has to end. “Go after your own paycheck. Go after your own benefits.”
Samuelsen is, in effect, ignoring the real issues. Instead of working with the MTA to identify cost savings and putting pressure on Albany to help reform public transit funding (and MTA oversight), Samuelsen is highlighting a red herring. The MTA is $800 million in debt, and Walder’s salary, relatively low for an organization the size of the MTA, is needed to attract talented transit planners — instead of politically appointed real estate cronies — to run the MTA. Additionally, Samuelsen’s salary far outstrips that of MTA workers as well.
I’ll delve more into the MTA’s financial outlook later tonight. But for now, we know what’s in store for the authority. It is saddled with debt and runaway spending costs. Its leaders have vowed to avoid service cuts for the next few years, but to ensure that service remains the same, both the riders and the MTA’s employees at all levels will have to pay. Until serious funding reform efforts are under way, year-by-year budgetary living will be the way of economic life at the MTA, and for that, the millions of New York straphangers will pay more and more at the turnstile.
20 comments
I’m sick of this BS about Walder’s salary. It’s slightly higher than transit chiefs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, who move far fewer people each day than the MTA. Apparently, Samuelsen doesn’t want a competent head of the MTA, because they won’t be able to get one if the salary is any lower.
What does he want Walder’s salary to be? $150,000? Congratulations, you’ve solved 0.05% of the MTA’s budget problem. You only have to find that money 199,999 more times to fill the gap.
Not that his salary is directly paid by the people, but doesn’t Samuelsen make 120,000 per year.
I would say that Walder’s job has much more than three times the difficulty, complexity, and responsibility. Besides having to deal with the TWU, he has the other unions to deal with, the non-union employees, the politicians, the buses, the trains, the riding public, etc. I’m not saying that Samuelsen’s salary is too high, but he really isn’t in much of a position to be throwing stones.
That’s my whole point, but I think it’s Samuelsen’s tactic. He’s changing the dialogue from real issues to fake ones to obscure the fact that labor is being asked to make concessions. If Walder were to cut his own salary from, say, $350,000 to $300,000, it’s not as though the TWU would acquiesce to wage freezes and stricter work rules.
It’s not a question of affecting the budget – it’s the symbolism. Asking employees who earn far less to sacrifice while not doing anything yourself inherently generates hostility.
Symbolism matters in a public endeavor like this one. So far Walder seems to be very good at uniting a union that less than 2 years ago was riven by infighting.
[…] « In a four-year plan, fare hikes and labor concessions abound Jul […]
Walder should make a deal with Samuelsen – he (Walder) will work for $1 a year, like Bloomberg, and the TWU will accept all of the MTA’s demands.
Walder is not a billionaire like Bloomberg, and his salary cut won’t do a lot of difference for the budget. (From the history of this union leader, he probably won’t be satisfied until all upper management makes the same concession and all of his union jobs are saved.) And even if Walder were to agree, it is possible that the next New York governor may appoint a new MTA Chairman/CEO. Is it fair for the next chairman to have that same restriction just because the previous chairman and union head didn’t get along?
Oh great, that’s all we need is Cuomo appointing some flunky who will let the unions walk all over them.
Well, at least the President was in town today to suck up to his union friends. It is really quite simple- In the future elect more conservative types- not fake ones like Guiliani and Pataki. RINO’s folks. Wanna know why the republicans didnt vote for the Disclose act? Union favors….You can dismiss, hem, haw, cry, and delete my posting but until liberals who are in bed with unions are ousted, I say Mr. Samuelson should keep up what he is doing. After all, he is looking out for his people.
What conservative would be real enough for you? George W. Bush? Alan Greenspan? Sarah Palin?
Maybe he means an economic conservative, thus eliminating at least Bush and Palin. Heck, even Paterson said all the right things at first, until the party machine and the media conspired to utterly destroy him for it. But at least he gave us Walder, who so far sounds ready and willing to do exactly what he’s there for: to defend the interests of the taxpayer, which are at direct odds to the interests of the unions.
Funny, I thought Walder was there to provide mass transit for the metro area.
Giuliani and Pataki were economically conservative. They were moderate on cultural issues, which do not have an effect on taxes and spending.
If they were truky economic conservatives, they would not have set things in motion that permitted the MTA to amass such debt that started under their tenure.
oops…truly!
[…] that the MTA Board has set in motion the next round of fare hikes, transit advocates have begun to lay out their positions on the […]
That Samuelsen is a real idiot. Walder’s salary/benefits would be 10x as much in a for-profit company of a similar size. Too bad he has to deal with a Chairman with a real back bone. We should all feel sorry for him.
Maybe at a rent-seeking American for-profit company Walder would make ten times as much. At a responsible Japanese for-profit railroad, Walder would probably be making about as much as he makes today. I have no idea how much JR East’s CEO makes, but Toyota’s CEO makes a little less than a million US dollars a year, and Toyota is about ten times bigger than JR East.
His salary would be less if he were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Commandant of the USCG. Executive compensation has to come down all over this land of “ours”. Hell the head of the NYPL makes $800,000, it’s ridiculous.
There’s another aspect of this you need to think about. If you cut compensation (it’s not just salaries, benefits are part of the equation), will you get employees who can maintain the system? A lot of fancy electronics are being installed, in subway cars, stations, signaling systems, etc. Troubleshooting this stuff is a lot harder than the older technology. If you pay lousy salaries and treat employees badly, you won’t get people smart enough to keep it working.
There is a lot of suspicion among TA workers that the long term dream is to outsource that work to contractors. And it may look cheaper to do so. But once the internal knowledge is lost the contractor has you by a particular part of your anatomy, and you will pay accordingly. And if you want something fixed immediately, at night, or on a holiday, good luck. You’ll be paying equivalent wage rates of hundreds of dollars an hour.