Last week commenter Alon Levy criticized the Manhattan Institute’s position on transit unions, and Nicole Gelinas in particular, as being too focused on overall pay levels while neglecting overstaffing. Nicole wrote to me soon after to defend her record on the transit issue, and it does indeed look like she’s addressed the issues that Alon talks about:
Alon Levy takes my comments out of context. I have talked about pay cuts in regards to token-booth clerks – retail-level workers who earn more than $54,000 a year (plus benefits) to staff stations. The MTA, because it has no flexibility to cut the pay of these workers, has simply dispensed of the workers wholesale, leaving many station entranced unmanned. There is a disconnect here: the public prefers to see a person in the station; the MTA loses revenue when no one is there to monitor fare-beating (also, at some stations, including downtown, the NYPD must deploy people to stations to deter this fare-beating, at a much higher cost); and there are many people with retail skills looking for part-time jobs who would happily do the job at a market wage at less than $54,000 a year. The MTA should have the flexibility to hire part-time workers at lower wages and benefits to staff empty stations.
She then points to this article she wrote back in 2009, where she takes aim at union work rules – which, as she pointed out in the email, is an indirect way of talking about staffing:
Track workers are one obvious opportunity for smart cost-cutting. The MTA employs 1,865 of them on the city’s subways. According to seethroughny.net, a project of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, each gets paid an average of nearly $59,000 (not including benefits or health care), for a total of $109 million in 2008. But as graduate students at Milano, the New School’s urban-policy program, found recently in research for the Manhattan Institute, New York doesn’t spend its resources efficiently here. Following union rules, the MTA schedules “nine hours of a track worker’s 40-hour week” during peak rush-hour times for trains. But MTA safety rules keep workers off the tracks during rush hours. In other words, the MTA schedules workers “when no work can take place.” Riders and taxpayers are paying people to do nothing. Worse, because union rules mandate eight-hour shifts and a normal eight-hour shift will almost always overlap with a rush hour, workers often wind up completing their tasks during overtime, for which they’re paid lots more. Overtime accounted for about 12 percent of the total spent on track workers last year, the Empire Center data show.
The MTA has experimented recently with how to reduce these costs, conducting a pilot program with the union to schedule workers on a four-day week—including two 12-hour days on the weekend, when scheduled trains are fewer, bringing up the number of hours in which workers can actually do work. The MTA could achieve savings, too, by going to two 12-hour days and three four- and five-hour days, since this kind of “off-peak week” wouldn’t overlap with rush hours and would completely eliminate unproductive paid work hours. But it would require “the abolishment of the eight-hour shift, an important bargaining agreement for the TWU,” the Milano students noted. Because the MTA spends so much on these labor costs and because the costs are so inefficient, such improvements could eventually save riders and taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year.
There were also a very interesting debate in the comments section (as always – I don’t think any blog has commenters as insightful and on-topic as you guys!) of the post in question on the importance of paycuts in reforming the MTA.
“Following union rules, the MTA schedules “nine hours of a track worker’s 40-hour week” during peak rush-hour times for trains.”
In their defense, this seems a little simplistic. Presumably they have other duties– preparation, bureaucracy, travel to and from work locations– which don’t require them to be on the track. (Not that I think the current system is some sort of paragon of efficiency…)
I’ll buy the 9 peak hours argument, for now. But I would not cite an article that complains about “12% overtime” as evidence I care about more than wage cuts, nor would I propose twelve-hour workdays in the next paragraph. In fact, if there are two twelve-hour days in the week then the workers would need 50% overtime for 20% of their hours, yielding 10% overtime. Thus even at perfect efficiency this would achieve tiny savings over the current regime… so much for saving money through efficiency.
I’ll buy the 9 peak hours argument, for now. But I would not cite an article that complains about “12% overtime” as evidence I care about more than wage cuts, nor would I propose twelve-hour workdays in the next paragraph. In fact, if there are two twelve-hour days in the week then the workers would need 50% overtime for 20% of their hours, yielding 10% overtime. Thus even at perfect efficiency this would achieve tiny savings over the current regime… so much for saving money through efficiency.
Here’s the rest of the email she sent me:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=4094
In general, when I talk about compensation levels, I talk not about pay cuts, but about wage freezes in the context of the most recent TWU contract, and about reforms to benefits structures so that the MTA is not so burdened by legacy costs that it cannot invest in capital.
In fact, I have talked about staffing levels many times, although I often do so indirectly, by way of talking about work rules.
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/nytom_transit.html
However, candidly, I do not think we can solve our problems simply by reducing staffing. For example, many supposed anti-union forces in New York City advocate for one-person train operation — i.e., the elimination of the conductor. I am not so sure about this idea. I wonder whether one person is adequate to supervise evacuation of a train that can carry 1,300 people in an emergency, for example. If we could reform pension benefits for new workers and reform health benefits for all workers, this question would not be so acute.
The union busters are those people who believe that union leaders should be inflexible in the face of a historic recession, severe service cuts, etc. — as they are the ones who ultimately lose the support of the public, the loss of which is the only thing that can bust a public-sector union.
Levy says that my ideas would render New York a third-world city. In fact, it is our failure to be realistic about employee compensation — again, mostly benefits, not pay — that will turn us into a third-world city and region, as our infrastructure will continue to deteriorate.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=6901
I have no opinion about the staffing level vs. pay/ benefits cut debate, but I find it hard to take the opinion of someone who is “not so sure” about a practice that is common, if not the norm, in rapid transit systems throughout the world (and possibly the country) seriously.
First, what J B said. Not only is OPTO common at most systems (though so far Toei has only converted two of its four lines are OPTO, Japan having been a later adopter than Europe), but also some systems are moving toward driverless trains.
Second, the pay numbers I’m using are really labor cost lines in financial statements – using the NTD for New York and a now-scrubbed factsheet for Toei – so they include benefits.
And third, the first vs. third world distinction – or the first world of today vs. the first world of 2010 – is all about relative costs of labor and technology. The IRT originally had a conductor per two cars and manual ticket collection; with economic growth came both the need and the capability for greater labor efficiency, bringing automated turnstiles and one conductor per train. Higher GDP per capita naturally leads to higher wages even for the same work – that’s why companies engage in offshoring. If you’re used to Indian wages then American wages would look outrageous to you, and vice versa.
One simple plea: Can we please stop talking about salary and instead discuss total compensation? Salary is meaningless for people who get nearly half of their compensation from other stuff.
(Granted, it’s impossible to say what total compensation is when you have a fixed benefit retirement package, but you can get in the ballpark, particularly if you double the official estimates of retirement costs.)
I’m talking about total compensation – again, my numbers come from labor cost lines on financial statements. I’m about 95% certain that so is Gelinas.