Hey, Joe Lhota — you’ve just been confirmed as MTA chairman! Now what?
Well, the authority must negotiate a new contract with its principal union — TWU Local 100 — so we’d say Lhota is looking at one hell of a bruising battle.
Objective One: Significant personnel-cost savings and down-to-railbed work-rule reform.
Lhota needs a contract that:
* Delivers wage savings, including an extension of the length of time it takes new employees to reach top pay rates.
* Increases employees’ contributions to health-care insurance premiums.
* Reduces the number of vacation days.
* Reforms overtime rules.
* And drops starting pay for subway cleaners (who now make 50 percent more than their private-sector counterparts).
The Transport Workers Union, no surprise, is demanding pay hikes and expanded benefits. We say no surprise, because the TWU has a history of utter disregard for economic reality — to say nothing of the ability of straphangers to support the costs of bloated contracts.
Fact is, New York and environs haven’t even begun to recover from one of the most debilitating recessions in recent memory.
A new contract must reflect that reality.
Indeed, Lhota’s starting position must be modeled after the deals Gov. Cuomo crafted with the state’s two largest public-employee unions: Both the Public Employees Federation and the Civil Service Employees Association accepted three years of zero pay hikes in their new contracts.
Beyond that, work rules must be addressed.
As The Post reported this month, bus drivers were paid to sit and do nothing for as long as eight hours a day over Christmas week — because the contract didn’t give supervisors the flexibility to have a smaller workforce to match service reductions.
Such rules helped contribute to almost $600 million in overtime costs last year.
It’s long past time for the TWU contract to be placed in the context of broader fiscal concerns.
Despite its illegal 2005 strike — or maybe because of it — the union managed to get away with murder in its current deal. Even with the region’s economic woes, a state arbitrator awarded the TWU a fat 11 percent raise.
Those same woes left the MTA financially reeling as real-estate taxes — which play a major role in the agency’s finances — dried up and further pinched the agency’s budget.
In addition, the Legislature raided funds that were supposed to be set aside for the MTA and tried to “replace” them with a poorly-designed business-payroll tax that was the worst of all possible worlds.
The MTA can’t be left in a similar situation going forward. (Though it will always be vulnerable to arbitrary decisions by politicians.)
Lhota over the years has shown himself to be an extraordinarily dedicated — and capable — public servant.
He’s about to get the test of his life, and we wish him well.