A new Inspector General report slams former Transit officials for the way they handled the most recent round of labor negotiations between the MTA and the TWU. The report, available here as a PDF, says that two separate incidents — one concerning health care contributions and another concerning arbitration compensation — cost the MTA a few million dollars and showed a lack of cooperation between MTA officials and its governing Board.
The 28-page report details the history of the 2009 labor negotiations and subsequent arbitration and proceedings and determines that Howard Roberts, then president of New York City Transit, did not consult with those who were more experienced in labor negotiations and cost the MTA $3 million in healthcare contributions. While he did not break any laws, Roberts “was not fully informed” and made his decisions in “self-imposed isolation, without the experience and knowledge of those individuals personally involved in the negotiation.” This action, said MTA IG Barry Kluger, is in line with the MTA’s “silo mentality” that isolates individual agencies.
The second half of the report details the MTA’s compensation agreement with John Zuccotti, the chief arbitrator in the labor dispute. At the request of current MTA CEO and Chair Jay Walder, Kluger examined Zuccotti’s deal with the MTA and found that it wasn’t memorialized in writing and did not contain the proper rates. Zuccotti has since agreed to waive his fee entirely, but the report is quite damning of former and current MTA officials’ callous disregard for the bottom line.
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I tried to tell you that Roberts was a disaster all along, Ben, but you were too blinded by a personal tour he gave you to see that this man was the most unqualified Transit head in half a century at least