Metro Costs For Overtime Are Up 56% Since 2002

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 5, 2007

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.

Metro officials also declined to comment on the accidents because the investigations are ongoing.

In 2004, after a Metro train rolled backward and slammed into another train at Woodley Park, federal safety officials concluded that the operator of the first train did not brake because he was probably asleep. He had slept poorly the night before the accident, was finishing an overtime shift when the accident occurred and had worked overtime shifts on nine of the 19 days in the month before the accident, according to the NTSB.

Metro's overtime provisions have been part of the contract between the agency and the union representing about 7,000 of the agency's more than 10,000 workers for decades. Pension benefits date to the late 1940s and predecessor transit systems. The vacation terms were negotiated in 1989, said Tom Roth, a financial adviser to Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 689. Some other transit systems, including New York's, have similar vacation provisions.

Management has made proposals to cap overtime, Roth said, but the two sides could not agree on a plan. The issue will probably come up again next year when the union's contract expires, officials said.

Unlike truck drivers and railroad workers, Metro employees are not covered by federal rules governing hours of service. Metro's rules, which are similar to those of other transit agencies, limit bus and train operators' on-duty time to 16 hours in a 24-hour period. Operators must have at least eight continuous hours off between shifts. Bus drivers are not allowed to drive for more than five hours and 45 minutes without a break.

Catoe has assigned his top deputy, Gerald C. Francis, to head an overtime task force. Metro also needs to plan better for predictable ridership increases, such as during baseball games and Fourth of July celebrations, Catoe said.

Catoe said he also plans to end the practice of paying overtime to regularly scheduled bus drivers on standby for emergencies.

"Do I think that we have, from a management perspective, controlled [overtime] from the standpoint of best financial policies? No," Catoe said. "Do I think we have controlled it from the best safety practices of the organization? No. But that's not the employees' fault. That rests with me. That rests with management."

For the long term, he said, Metro needs to train and recruit more drivers, operators and rail mechanics to fill vacancies and increase staffing, the main reasons for overtime.

Metro has about 2,400 bus driver positions, but last year there were 150 vacancies, officials said. There are 538 train operators and 118 vacancies.

The average pay for bus drivers is about $21 an hour. Overtime, which kicks in after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week, is paid at 1.5 times hourly rates. A seventh day in one week pays double time.

First dibs on overtime go to a pool of 300 senior bus drivers, known as the "extra board." Their regular assignment is to cover for sick and vacationing workers. Their average pay is higher, about $26 an hour, and most average 20 hours of weekly overtime, officials said, or roughly $40,000 in overtime pay a year. On the rails, Metro is so short-handed that there is no "extra board," which means "every time someone is absent, every time someone is called off for training or whatever, we have to cover that on overtime," Catoe said.

Working overtime allowed some bus drivers and train operators to nearly double their salaries last year, the equivalent of working an extra 36 hours every week. In 2006, the top-earning hourly worker was a train operator who received a salary of $77,893 and made $72,304 in overtime, for a paycheck of $150,197. The highest paid Metrobus operator had a $74,527 salary and $68,716 in overtime, for a paycheck of $143,243.

In 2003 and 2004, Metro increased its services -- and work hours -- by staying open later on weekends, opening earlier on weekdays and performing more maintenance on weekends. Three rail stations also opened.

"You've got Nationals games, Wizards games. You have cherry blossoms, the Redskins, and they haven't been able to staff properly," said Esker C. Bilger Jr., the union's financial secretary.

Retirements and maintenance work also helped increase overtime costs 17 percent last year over the previous year because of more track work and railcar carpet replacement, all of which had to be done on weekends and paid at overtime, agency officials said.

A regular workweek is 40 hours, but most bus and rail operators work more because almost no runs fit into neat, eight-hour chunks. So if a bus driver usually works a 47-hour week, for instance, his vacation pay would mimic his regular pay: 40 hours at straight time, plus seven hours of overtime, Roth said.

Vacation pay for "extra board" workers is calculated based on the average of their previous four workweeks, including scheduled overtime. The rationale, Roth said, is that workers should not take a pay cut when they go on vacation.

"I think it is a very generous benefit," said Catoe, who was surprised to learn about the provision. "The union did a very good job."

Catoe said it will take time to make changes. "There will always be people who make high salaries based on seniority," he said. "The question is, how many people are making it, are we controlling it correctly and do we have sufficient number of positions."

Overtime affects the agency's long-term costs, too, because pensions are based on the total number of hours worked, a common practice among transit agencies. Metro uses workers' four highest earning years. As a result, some retirees get pension checks bigger than the base pay they received while working. Managers say this encourages workers nearing retirement to increase overtime to boost pension benefits, which the union disputes.

Darrell Allison, 53, a bus driver, has been working for Metro for 27 years. As an "extra board" driver, he makes about $87,000 a year, a third of which comes from overtime pay. He said he needs it to support his family.

"Most of us would have to find some other type of job, not because you're living in extravagant style," he said. "It's to make ends meet."

Staff database editor Sarah Cohen and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.