Every weekday morning, some 200 city buses roll into Manhattan from Staten Is land, packed to the gills. After letting off passengers, they head home — empty — and park at one of three SI depots. Later, they head back to Manhattan — empty again — to collect the commuters and bring them home.
That’s right: 200 buses a day — wasting drivers’ time, burning gas (and dollars), adding wear-and-tear and spewing fumes — just to park. Yet there’s plenty of space at the Mike Quill bus garage on the West Side. It’s just that the transit unions won’t let the buses park there.
Welcome to the wacky world of work rules dictated by the unions: The current labor contract allows only a maximum of 82 Staten Island buses to park at Quill, no matter how much space it has. Beyond that, buses go home — empty.
It’s an unconscionable waste — but just one example of pointless work rules that bleed the MTA, even as a severe budget crunch has triggered painful subway and bus cuts and, soon, another fare hike.
These rules need fixing — fast. Yesterday, MTA brass hinted they had them in their crosshairs; they can’t move fast enough.
Let’s face it: Transit workers aren’t likely to hand back one cent of the fat pay hike they won last year. But if MTA boss Jay Wilder can’t shave wages, he shouldn’t give up. He can aim to fix these onerous, unnecessary, expensive rules.
Actually, he has little choice. Fare hikes alone won’t do the job, and agency brass have already snapped up the low-hanging fruit by axing buses and trains. The $40 million or so in administrative trims they cited yesterday will help, too — but not enough.
All these steps will close only about half of the MTA’s $760 million budget hole (if all goes well). Where will the money come from to plug the rest? (Don’t even think about what happens if the gap grows.)
Work-rule concessions can translate into a bundle of newfound cash, sparing riders further pain. Indeed, the rules are a key factor behind a huge share of operating costs for the MTA, especially its $500 million-a-year overtime bill. Union insistence on two workers per train, rather than one, alone nearly doubles the price tag for subway train manpower.
Nor are the nutty borough-hopping bus-parking rules the only truly bizarre example of waste:
* When it snows, some workers who report for duty may be given snow-related jobs — say, shoveling or mounting chains on tires — outside their normal job descriptions. The work may take a half hour, but employees get time and a half for the whole day.
* Long Island Rail Road crew members may be assigned to particular trains — diesel or electric, for instance, or those ferrying passengers versus empty trains needing to be relocated. Switch a crew member to a different train, and he automatically earns a free extra day’s pay. Sweet — for him.
Such rules make it impossible for managers to maximize efficiency and minimize costs. But that’s the point: Workers wind up accruing all kinds of extra pay and overtime by hamstringing their bosses.
Walder is well-positioned to press for change. For one thing, he’s got a solid six-year contract for himself — and would earn a hefty severance if he’s booted early. What’s he got to lose?
And he may have a trump card: rare public support. City straphangers are outraged about the coming service cuts and fare hikes.
At the same time, folks are increasingly seeing the link between cushy, hold-harmless deals for public-sector employees on the one hand and soaring costs and declining service for the public on the other.
If labor balks at work-rule fixes, Walder can play hardball by threatening more layoffs and a cap on overtime and other discretionary perks. That may well trigger job actions — but if so, workers shouldn’t count on automatic public support; riders may just back management this time around, even if it means more commuting pain in the short term. After all, wasteful work rules also take a toll on riders.
Alternatively, labor may realize that it, too, must give a bit in these strapped times. But one way or another, now’s the time to end these pricey MTA contract perversions.
As Rahm Emanuel might put it, an MTA cash crunch would be a terrible thing to waste.