The cash-strapped MTA is set to announce a plan today to lay off more than 1,000 employees this year in an attempt to dig out from a $700 million budget shortfall, sources said.
Officials expect to save $50 million from the planned cuts, which will affect station agents as well as administrators.
About 600 managers from all of the agency’s divisions — including NYC Transit — will receive pink slips over the next several days, sources said.
Most of those workers are not unionized, and the layoffs will range from high-ranking managers to lower-level jobs, MTA board and agency sources said.
And transit officials also plan to ditch 450 station agents at a much faster pace than what was announced in December, a board source said.
Those workers mostly belong to the 35,000-member Transport Workers Union.
“[MTA chairman] Jay Walder envisions a system devoid of workers, and riders are going to pay a heavy price for this philosophy in the case of an emergency,” said TWU president John Samuelsen.
He added he wasn’t alerted to the layoffs by MTA brass.
But he did say that the previous TWU bosses — led by Roger Toussaint, who was at the helm during the 2005 holiday-season transit strike — gave up a clause during contract negotiations in 2002 that prevented its workers from being canned.
“The union will fight to defend its membership, but our position has been substantially weakened since previous administrations gave up a no-layoff clause in 2002,” Samuelsen said.
An MTA source said in-house lawyers have given Walder the all-clear to “accelerate” laying off the station agents, instead of relying on the process of attrition.
Samuelsen said the current contract does have a clause that says workers can be shifted to other jobs, and will use that language to try and keep his members on the payroll.
Bean counters from consulting firm Accenture have been analyzing MTA’s headcount for weeks as the agency struggles with a massive budget hole caused by lower-than-expected tax revenues and cuts in state aid.
At a committee meeting yesterday, board members listened as finance officials described real-estate tax revenues slipping even further than what was projected.
In total, that income is down by about $5.2 million more than expected, according to agency documents.
One of the first promises Walder made after taking over last year was to reduce the 70,000-person workforce and cut down on extreme overtime costs.
To make up for the massive budget deficit, the agency has already proposed eliminating free student MetroCards and scaling back service for disabled riders.
On top of that, officials want to implement a severe schedule of service cuts that will take dozens of buses off the road, eliminate the M and W lines, and reroute the V.
Those proposed cuts will go before a public hearing next month.