Metro Costs For Overtime Are Up 56% Since 2002

Every weekday, Metro pays overtime to a group of bus drivers whose regular shifts include being on standby in case of accidents or other emergencies. Many workers at the transit agency are able to double their salaries with overtime. Metro retirees enjoy annual pension payments that are sometimes higher than their on-the-job salaries because overtime is included in their benefit calculations.

Station managers and bus and train operators get a special bonus: Their vacation pay includes overtime.

During the past five years, the amount of overtime that Metro paid bus drivers, train operators and other key personnel has increased by about 56 percent, topping out at nearly $91 million last year, transit agency records show. That was more than 14 percent of the agency's total payroll.

The trend has been a boon for workers: Last year, 139 operators, station managers, mechanics and other hourly wage earners took home paychecks of $110,000, quadruple the number who did so in 2004.

Metro's overtime provisions and practices, the result of management decisions and decades-old union agreements, have come under scrutiny in recent months as the agency has faced a $116 million budget gap that led to layoffs and talk of future fare increases. General Manager John B. Catoe Jr., who took over in January, has said that overtime has been poorly managed and has pledged to control it as part of his effort to remake the agency.

Long hours also raised safety concerns after several high-profile train accidents involved workers who were on, or had recently logged, overtime shifts.

At the same time, Metro managers are eager to show they are good stewards of public money as Congress considers a bill in the coming weeks to authorize $1.5 billion over 10 years to rehabilitate the system.

The issue has become a large enough concern that the House of Representatives has taken the unusual step of trying to limit Metro's use of overtime in its version of the bill, which would provide money for new equipment. One amendment would limit employees' overtime pay to one-third of regular wages in a given pay period. The other would exclude overtime pay from pension calculations, except as allowed in collective bargaining agreements.

"I think the practices are unconscionable when you look at the safety and cost issues," said Charles Deegan, who was Metro board chairman until April. "How do you explain to our customer that we're paying bus and train operators overtime pay to vacation in Disney World?"

The overtime recipients said that they need it to get by and that Metro is short-staffed. Tracy Stokes, 37, makes about $65,000 a year as a train operator but typically adds $20,000 in overtime. Her schedule includes weekends, which means her 9-year-old son cannot play sports "because I don't have weekend time to take him to practice and games," Stokes said.

She also works many of her days off. "I pay for college for my 19-year-old daughter," Stokes said. "I use the overtime money to pay for tuition."

Previously undisclosed information about two fatal train accidents raises questions about allowing long work weeks. The operator of a train that struck and killed two track workers last year had worked 10 days in a row before the accident, a Metro spokeswoman said. Six months earlier, the operator of a Red Line train that hit and killed a track worker had been on the job each of the four previous days, including 15 hours the day before the accident. Both accidents are being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, whose officials declined to comment.