Metro’s annual payroll swelled by nearly 12 percent in the past three years to $765.2 million in fiscal 2006 — or nearly 70 percent of its $1.1 billion operating budget — as the transit agency hired 447 new workers over the same period, officials said.
Metro now has 10,503 employees on its payrolls, up from 10,056 in 2004 and 9,254 in 2000, officials said. Ridership has increased by nearly 16 percent over the same period.
Critics have been quick to blame the high labor costs on mismanagement, saying the agency is bloated and inefficient. But Metro Interim General Manager Dan Tangherlini, while admitting there could be some improvements, said he would match his labor costs against any other transit agency.
“Aside from our assets — trains, buses and tracks — all we are is labor,” Tangherlini said. “We recover nearly 80 percent of our operating costs from fares — and that is among the best in the industry.”
Tangherlini, well-known in city circles for eliminating unnecessary overtime as chief financial officer at the D.C. Police Department and director of the D.C. Department of Transportation, said the system is somewhat hampered because of its aging and thus higher-paid workforce. An estimated 40 percent of Metro employees are eligible to retire by 2010.
About 85 percent of Metro employees are unionized, officials said, and annual contract-mandated increases, while above the typical 3 percent cost-of-living increase, are not out of line with other transit agencies, Tangherlini said.
“We are going to use any tool that is available to us to try to cut labor costs,” Tangherlini said. “This is a real opportunity for us to rethink how we operate.”
