In the latest sign of how badly the MTA’s labor contracts serve the public as a whole, last week brought a fresh Metro-North Railroad scandal: Two now-suspended fraudsters allegedly faked commuter station safety and equipment checks — with one “worker” dining out while on the clock.
Managers discovered the scam after noticing that forms claiming the work got done at a particular time didn’t jibe with GPS records showing the inspectors’ vehicles were elsewhere.
The failure to conduct mandatory tests, inspections and maintenance puts commuters’ lives at risk, and this is far from the first outrageous fraud by MTA railroad workers.
- In 2024, an audit found other Metro-North inspectors faked checks, with 100 safety tests never being completed along the New Haven line and New Canaan branch.
- Also last year, the inspector general found that a Metro-North supervisor repeatedly disabled his work vehicle’s GPS to run personal errands.
- A 2019 Empire Center report looking at spikes in MTA overtime spending at the LIRR blew the lid off the use of overtime to inflate pensions.
For years, the Empire Center and other critics have pointed to insane union work rules and weak management oversight that enables systemic abuses at the MTA’s two commuter railroads, burning taxpayer money and endangering passengers.
The railroad workers’ union contracts mandate exorbitant pay and work rules that drive costs through the roof, leaving commuters and taxpayers on the hook.
The LIRR lags even Metro-North, which at least has embraced cameras, GPS and biometrics to curtail abuses and raise productivity — though privileges in union contracts can exclude that evidence from disciplinary proceedings, or at least make it take months to terminate cheats or rank incompetents.
Cross your fingers that ongoing contract talks can eliminate some of the most obscene work rules.
“We have to stand up for the riders,” MTA boss Janno Lieber recently vowed to The Post Editorial Board.
Indeed: As LIRR talks proceed, now with federal mediators involved, MTA management must insist on changes to boost productivity and end privileges that exist purely to protect fraudsters and featherbedders.
With the state and city and the MTA itself all facing major budget gaps in coming years, it’s vital to get the railroads on a sane financial track.