REPORT: MTA WORKERS' OT UNEARNED CONTRACT RULES LET EMPLOYEES STRATEGICALLY FILL TIME CARDS.

Byline: RACHEL URANGA Staff Writer

MTA bus mechanics and clerks regularly took home hundreds of dollars in overtime pay even though they worked less than a standard 40-hour work week, the MTA's Office of the Inspector General found in a report released Thursday.

By padding their time cards with vacation and compensatory time, mechanics and clerks were able to bill the MTA for overtime by working as little as three days in a week, the report showed.

While the report only covered the period from July 2004 to July 2005, it suggests the practice has been ongoing for more than a decade and could have potentially cost the financially strapped agency millions.

Officials for the mechanics union said the practice was perfectly acceptable under its contract, and blasted the report for making it appear they were defrauding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

MTA officials themselves said the current contract may allow this type of overtime billing, but said they would work to rein it in.

``It's an insult to my membership and the working people here,'' said Neil Silver, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, representing more than 2,000 mechanic and service workers. ``They are making this insinuation that my members are ripping off the public, and they are not. They work for a living.''

According to the report, MTA employees raked in nearly half a million dollars in unearned overtime pay, with supervisors signing off time cards that strategically placed vacation, sick and compensatory days on shortened work weeks to result in the appearance of overtime.

For example, one employee's time card showed he worked two regular days, took two vacation days and took one compensatory day, resulting in a five-day work week with only two actually worked. On top of that the employee worked an additional day, a total of three actual working days.

But the employee billed that entire third day as overtime because it appeared as a sixth working day on his time card. He earned $108 in overtime for that day.

MTA officials were hesitant to say whether the practice was violating the union contract. They said it would violate the contract if employees use sick days to fill up their work week and then claim overtime, but added it could be acceptable to use vacation time.

``We need to fix this and we immediately went to the union (for) clarification,'' said Alex Clifford, manager overseeing MTA's southeastern sector that includes Long Beach. Clifford said the MTA was in talks with the union to resolve the overtime billing practice.

``It was absolutely not malintentioned but it was a matter of inconsistent application of the union contract,'' Clifford said.

The report, completed in June but not released publicly until Thursday, found that in the year period, there were 16,717 cases in which workers inappropriately received overtime.

The report suggests MTA managers were confused about the rules. While some clearly approved the process, others believed it was not right.

``If the managers allowed this, then that means they are not paying attention to the rules and not enforcing them,'' one maintenance instructor was quoted as telling inspectors in the report.

MTA officials say they are in the process of conducting an internal audit and have found that only $50,000 in overtime costs were inappropriately billed.

``Our CEO Roger Snoble takes this very seriously and they are looking at different avenues to rectify this situation,'' said Rick Jagger, MTA spokesman.

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

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