For the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to have any chance of significantly cutting its budget-busting overtime bills, the authority must change key provisions in its labor contract with its primary employees union, the chairman of the agency?s board of directors said.
The labor contract has a retirement policy that includes overtime earnings when calculating pension payments as well as seniority provisions that limit Metro?s ability to hire new operators. It has resulted in vast overtime payments and bloated retirement checks for some employees.
Charles Deegan, whose chairmanship ends this month, says he hopes Metro will negotiate ways to cut back its overtime expenses. Deegan wants more required time off for drivers between shifts. The current labor contract says bus operators must take at least eight hours off every day.
Conceivably, an operator could drive an eight-hour shift from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then work overtime from 2 until 10 p.m. because he or she would still have an eight-hour break before the next shift.
“I have been upset about this for three years,” Deegan said. “Eight hours off is not enough. That means they can work 16 hours a day every day of the week.”
Metro?s four-year contract with Local 689 of the Amalgamated Transit Union expires next year. The union represents 70 percent of Metro?s 10,000 employees, including operation, maintenance and administrative workers.
Metro?s unionized employees do not have the right to strike, but they do enjoy a rare benefit ? their overtime earnings count toward their salary when retirement payments are calculated. Generally, companies only consider a base salary when determining pension payments.
“There?s no other transit company that does this,” Metro Chief Financial Officer Chuck Woodruff said at a budget briefing in December. “It is something we will have to take up with the union because it?s in their contract.”
Negotiating the lucrative benefits out of the union contract will not be easy. The employee union controls many things at Metro, including the seniority rules that stipulate only bus operators can become train operators. And the bus operators are offered the chance to move to train operations based solely on seniority ? a policy that also has support from General Manager John Catoe.
“The union has always been very powerful,” Deegan said.
