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TORONTO – Almost 1,400 TTC employees earned more than $100,000 in 2012 according to the latest Sunshine List.

Over 12,000 people are employed by the TTC and just over one-tenth of them appear on the annual Sunshine List as a result of overtime.

However, TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said costs would be greater if they did not pay overtime.

“If we didn’t budget for overtime and plan for overtime than in fact our costs would be greater,” Ross said. “We’d have to in fact pay somebody a full-time salary plus benefits to fill in that work.”

Ross said the TTC budgets for expected overtime and warned without paying the commission would run the risk of not meeting service demands or “extraordinarily high” costs as a result of hiring more people.

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Of the 1395 employees on the list, 217 are operators and 21 are station collectors.

Officials from the Toronto Taxpayers Coalition – a Toronto organization which advocates for lower city costs – said the city’s labour costs “continue to rise at a dramatic rate.”

“Labour costs are the single biggest pressure on the city’s budget,” said Toronto Taxpayers Coalition President Matthew McGuire. “$100,000 is a lot of money. Most taxpayers paying these salaries can only dream of earning this much.”

“Now we’re learning that we are paying 21 people over $100,000 to sell Metropasses.”

Ross points out that if the Sunshine List had kept pace with inflation since its introduction in 1994, only 55 TTC employees would be on the list.

However, McGuire says that even today $100,000 is more than most private-sectors workers earn.

“It seems that the number of people getting paid exorbitant wages is far too high,” McGuire said. “The TTC doesn’t have their labour costs under control.”