Want to make $200K? Become a train repairman

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

A train car repairman for New York City earned nearly $203,000?last year -?more than the city transportation authority's?chief operating officer?-?thanks?to overtime bonuses?that workers are able to receive under union rules, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transit Authority confirmed to msnbc.com.

Vincent Blackburn, a repairman for the Long Island Rail Road, was one of 20 employees who received a six-figure overtime bonus in 2011, as first reported by The New York Post. Blackburn earned more than double his base pay of $66,539.12?in overtime, the paper said, in part due to an arcane labor agreement called "Rule 24."

Rule 24 has been phased out at all?but one Metropolitan Transit Authority facility: the Long Island Rail Road's Richmond Hill, Queens, repair center, where Blackburn and seven of the 10 highest overtime earners work, reported The Post. Whether or not manpower is actually needed, Rule 24 calls for all vacant positions on certain shifts to be filled by?the railroad, creating opportunities for huge overtime payments that increase with seniority.

Aaron Donovan, MTA spokesman, confirmed to msnbc.com that the Post report was accurate. Blackburn wasn't available for comment Tuesday morning.

News of the large bonuses comes amid a hike in fares for MTA riders in 2011. There are?plans for more fare increases of about 7.5 percent in 2013 and again in 2015, the MTA chairman told NBC New York earlier this year.

While Rule 24 assisted in the bonuses at Richmond Hill's repair shop, employees of another quasi-public agency, the Port Authority, padded their base salaries with hefty overtime compensation, too. Sergeant Edwin Rivera, 43, was the biggest overtime earner out of the 44,000 Porth Authority employees for 2011, the Post found. A search on?SeeThroughNY.net, a database of earnings for New York public employees, reveals?Rivera?pulled in $166,035 in addition to his base pay of $107,911. Rivera, of Staten Island, gets about $52 an hour to supervise police officers; that increases to $77.82 per hour for time-and-a-half overtime.

Rivera has already worked 888 hours of overtime in 2012 - about 40 hours per week - putting him on track to earn even more in 2012, an official told The Post.?He has consistently been a top overtime earner in his 16 years with the MTA, partially because Port Authority has only 141 sergeants on the force, 20 fewer than needed, said The Post.

Calls to Rivera went unanswered on Tuesday. A press officer said the Port Authority would offer a response on the overtime payouts later Tuesday afternoon.

Christopher Garrick, another repairman at the Long Island Rail Road's Richmond Hill, Queens, repair center, got more than $124,300 in overtime last year in addition to his base salary of $64,367.42. Garrick could not be reached by msnbc.com.

According to an MTA?report from January 2011 that outlines cost-saving measures, the agency began a crackdown in 2009 on "unnecessary overtime that will save the MTA $70 million annually." Reducing administrative staff, consolidating MTA back office functions?and?freezing non-represented employees' wages were also listed in the agenda, which called for cumulative cost savings of up to $3.8 billion by 2014.

Calls to the New York State Comptroller's office from msnbc.com seeking comment on the MTA payouts were not immediately returned.

Bloated overtime?pay isn't the only problem the MTA is facing. Last week, the State Comptroller's Office revealed findings from a two-year audit of?a unit of the?MTA's Metro-North Railroad. Workers who were supposed to "monitor train conditions and crew performance were not on the job when they were scheduled to work and performed poorly when they were," the audit said.

In an examination of 300 rides, the comptroller's office discovered employees in Metro North's On-Board Services Unit had little to no supervision and "surfed the internet during work hours, including spending 6.5 hours on firearm sites and Google and 5 hours on various commercial sites such as Chuck E. Cheese. Reviews of cell phone usage found little communication between staff members and their supervisor but did find out-of-state calls and calls home."

The MTA has disbanded the unit as a result of the audit.

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