How many MTA workers aren’t actually on the job for shifts they get paid for? The cut wire shown on the front page of Thursday’s Post makes that a very live question.
The cable ran to a fingerprint-scanning machine that’s part of a new biometric timekeeping system at Jamaica Station on the Long Island Rail Road — which is supposed to replace vintage 1960s time-clock punchcard technology.
LIRR managers were plainly hoping to end a suspected no-show problem, since the old system makes it easy for one employee to punch another in. And it’s obvious that some idiot thought he could stop the move — or send a message about more resistance to come — by cutting the line.
Both MTA police and the agency’s new inspector general, Carolyn Pokorny, will investigate the brazen sabotage.
“It’s obviously disturbing for anyone to be sabotaging the system that was meant to ensure attendance is timely, accurate and correct,” said Pokorny, who visited the Coney Island Rail Yard and Quill Bus Depot in Manhattan on Thursday to observe yet more outdated timekeeping systems.
It’s all the start of the MTA’s response to Post exposés on overtime abuse, especially at the LIRR. For now, we can hope that the other divisions aren’t as plagued by no-show scammers as the LIRR, but it’s a bad sign that the Transport Workers Union is also screaming about the new investigations.
And, yes, this is a failure of management, not just technology: If no-show rates run as high as rumored, the abuse has to be an open secret that midlevel executives, at least, have simply opted to live with.
Standing up to union members’ scams requires courage in New York, since the politicians who ultimately run the show almost always shrink from a fight — because public opinion is generally pro-labor.
Maybe this fight will be different. Thanks to the Empire Center’s work in making pay info public, New Yorkers have had eye-openers like the LIRR employees who clocked in for impossible amounts of overtime — 4,000 hours in a single year!
“If you get paid to come to work, we expect you to come to work,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters. New Yorkers deserve and demand “accountability, efficiency and effectiveness” and won’t “tolerate getting ripped off.”
If the push for fraud-proof timekeeping meets a whole campaign of sabotage, with union chiefs running interference, the public will realize that the “heroes of labor” are really just thieves.
With all the MTA’s labor contracts up for renegotiation this year, the public needs to know what’s really going on.
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