Thomas C. Zambito

tzambito@lohud.com

At least 40 track workers made more in OT than salary in 2013 and 2014

Track workers are allowed to work around the clock

Capital projects have been put on hold while the railroad fixes its tracks

Eduardo Vargas logged 5,043 hours last year fixing the machinery Metro-North uses to repair its track, which averages roughly to 14-hour days, seven days a week for an entire year.

Coverage: Crumbling ties cost Metro-North in OT

Vargas’ overtime for 2013 and 2014 — when Metro-North was rallying to repair long-neglected track amid several derailments — totaled more than $300,000.

In 2014, Vargas’ $309,000 total payout ranked him third among all Metro-North employees. Vargas, a machinist, earned some $41,000 more than the commuter rail’s president, Joseph Giulietti, that year, according to Metro-North labor costs obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

“These high numbers are definitely an eyebrow raiser for me,” said Tim Hoefer, the executive director of the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank in Albany that studies MTA overtime. “At the very least they warrant asking questions about the spending and whether or not projects and hours are being managed properly.”

Vargas is not alone.

In recent years, workers who repair and maintain Metro-North’s 775 miles of track have supplanted engineers and conductors for the top spots among the railroad’s biggest overtime earners, according to the documents. At least 40 track workers made more in overtime than they did in salary in 2013 and 2014, with half of those making six figures in overtime alone, the data shows.

Chart: Top 10 overtime earners, 2013

Chart:Top 10 overtime earners, 2014

Database: 2013 Metro-North OT

Database: 2014 Metro-North OT

Two other rail workers stand out for their overtime totals.

Track supervisor Robert M. O’Connell worked 4,876 hours last year, meaning he would have had to work a little more than 13-hour days every day of the year, records show. He led Metro-North with $154,000 in overtime in 2013, allowing him to triple his $74,000 annual salary. And in 2014 O’Connell pulled in $184,000 in overtime.

Track supervisor Richard R. Bourt Jr. worked 3,832 hours last year, Metro-North says. In 2013, Bourt ranked third in overtime with $141,000, nearly tripling his $75,000 salary. In 2014, he made $169,000 in overtime and a salary of $77,000.

The findings come as Metro-North’s overtime costs have soared to their highest levels in years. Last year, the railroad paid out some $89 million in overtime after handing out $98 million in 2014, up from $68 million in 2013 and $55 million in 2012. Overtime for track workers has ranged between $10 million and $15 million in recent years, Metro-North said.

But Metro-North said the year-by-year increase is artificially higher than it should be since a large chunk of the recent payouts are due to retroactive salary and overtime increases resulting from a labor agreement in 2013. And they said back-to-back winters with heavy snowfall that fell on weekends contributed as well.

By Metro-North’s calculations, overtime would have been some $20 million lower in 2014, while figures for 2012 and 2013 would have been higher. The 2014 total represented 19.2 percent of Metro-North's total payroll, up from 15.6 percent in 2011.

Costly mistakes

How did this happen? How did some track workers double and, in some cases, nearly triple their salaries?

The answer is rooted in the costly, sometimes deadly, mistakes that conspired to take the glint off the reputation of a commuter rail regarded among the nation’s best and forced a top-to-bottom re-examination of whether passenger safety was sacrificed in the rush to keep trains on time.

Related: Metro North Customers happier with service in 2015

“I’ve made it a point to not be critical of the past administrations but, at the end of the day, we have to admit that we’re still in a situation right now that maintenance got deferred,” Giulietti told The Journal News. “We’re trying to now catch up.”

The beginnings of the track workers’ surging overtime payouts dates to May 2013 when a New Haven line train bounded off the tracks in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It sideswiped an oncoming train, injuring more than 70 passengers. Bourt was among those who supervised track workers who repaired the tracks in the area following the crash.

It continued through July 2013 when a CSX train carrying municipal garbage went off the rails in the Bronx. No one was injured in a crash that federal officials attributed to track failure, including crumbling concrete rail ties.

The derailments, coupled with the deaths of two track workers and a derailment in December 2013 that killed four passengers when an engineer fell asleep at the controls, reverberated through Metro-North.

“The most important part for all of our passengers is can they rely on the trains and know that the trains are going to be there,” said Giulietti. “That’s kind of what we lost. We lost that by adding more and more trains and not taking care of the core maintenance responsibilities, and that’s what we’re trying to get back to.”

An investigation by The Journal News/lohud.com shows that a host of factors contributed to the overtime payouts for track workers.

Among them:

Overdue track repairs. Federal investigators found that ties used to hold rails together were not being regularly inspected, repaired and replaced.

Loss of skilled workers. A “hollowed-out” workforce lost to retirements left the railroad with a dwindling number of workers with the skills to perform key tasks along the tracks.

Track workers are scheduled to work regular weekday shifts but log overtime for night and weekend work when the bulk of the repairs need to get done. Unlike other Metro-North workers, nothing prevents them from working around the clock.

Veteran workers get first crack at overtime, a longstanding practice which allows those in their last years on the job to bump up their pension payouts.

Since May 2013, Metro-North workers have replaced some 100,000 railroad ties. Nearly 17 miles of rails have been welded and 32 railroad crossings were improved.

In a statement issued last month, Giulietti heralded the “extraordinary system-wide track-reconstruction effort.”

“Our rails are safer today as a result of this concerted increase in track-renewal work,” he said.

Metro-North has revamped the way it detects track flaws and identifies metal fatigue, and employs state-of-the-art track geometry cars to ensure that rails remain smooth.

But it’s come with a hefty price. Some $11 million was spent on a drainage project after concrete ties in the Bronx were damaged by water. Another $2.5 million went to a Colorado-based consulting company which investigated the railroad’s track failures and offered recommendations.

The Bridgeport derailment caused $18.5 million in property damage and has led to more than $10 million in settlement and legal costs to resolve lawsuits filed by passengers and workers aboard the trains, records show. The CSX accident caused nearly $1 million in property damage.

Playing catch up

Giulietti says the cost likely won’t be passed along to riders in the way of ticket fares, which have increased five times over the past seven years. But it means that capital projects like the purchase of new train cars and other upgrades will be delayed as the railroad plays catch up with its maintenance.

“If you look at our capital program for the next five years, somewhere in the vicinity of 80 to 90 percent is just for state of good repair,” Giulietti said. “It would be nice to have a capital program dedicated towards what are the next levels that we’re going to take this service to, but we’re not there yet.”

Giulietti replaced Howard Permut in February 2014 in the months after the Bronx derailment killed four and unleashed a series of federal safety investigations. The crash had been the deadliest in Metro-North’s history until February 2015 when a commuter train slammed into a sport-utility vehicle at a grade crossing in Valhalla. Six died, including the SUV driver, Ellen Brody of Edgemont.

Giulietti refocused the railroad’s attention to fixing and repairing its track, starting in Bridgeport and the Bronx.

In Bridgeport, the National Transportation Safety Board investigators cited Metro-North for not assigning someone to visually walk the track to look for potential dangers.

The NTSB said the derailment of a rush-hour train was caused by a broken joint bar that left a gap between two pieces of rail that were not welded together properly. A Metro-North vice president told federal investigators the railroad lacked skilled welders.

“He said that many of the welders with the skill level to perform the recommended welding technique had retired,” the 2014 report said.

Giulietti said retirements have contributed to overtime payouts for track work.

"Right now we’re catching up with the fact that we had a 30-year plateau, an awful lot of people walked out the door and we’re tying to fill positions," he said. "And while we’re trying to fill positions we have to cover with overtime."

Union work rules

Unlike conductors and engineers, track workers are not bound by so-called “hours of service” rules that would prevent them from working long days. Many refuse promotions because it would mean a reduction in pay, according to a report prepared by a Metro-North consultant.

Giulietti acknowledged that fatigue is an issue, especially in the wake of the Bronx derailment. Federal investigators found that engineer William Rockefeller was suffering from an undiagnosed case of sleep apnea and a recent shift change.

Since then, all Metro-North engineers have been tested for sleep apnea.

“Even if I want to, I cannot turn around and designate that the lead person there shouldn’t get the overtime because of the amount of hours they’ve already worked,” Giulietti said.

For those nearing retirement the payouts will factor into their pensions, which are based on their average pay in the last five years on the job. O’Connell, who started in 1978, is among the railroad’s most senior track supervisors. Bourt started in 1984, Vargas in 1994, records show.

For the next few years, though, Giulietti says the work will continue.

“We have to expend what we’re spending now to get the railroad back,” he said. “There isn’t another answer at this moment in time… Thank God we’ve got employees that are willing to put in the additional time to bring this railroad back.”