Stop the presses: Transit workers are exploiting the system to rack up huge amounts of overtime.

The revelation that a 33-year Long Island Rail Road track worker with a $54,989 base salary raked in $311,162 last year, outrageous as it was, came as no surprise. Every year veteran Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees cash in massively on overtime. Every year the abuse is flagged by salary-data hounds at the Empire Center for New York State Policy. Every year the media publishes the story. And every year the MTA pledges to act but does nothing. At the LIRR, overtime costs rose more than 50% in the past four years.

Patrick Foye, the new head of the sprawling transit agency, is the latest to take on the challenge. He ordered an audit of the past 12 months of MTA overtime, which grew by more than $100 million last year. Foye has been down this road before: As head of the Port Authority in 2011, he praised the release of data showing 66 agency police officers had made more than $200,000 in 11 months. “What you can measure, you can manage,” Foye said at the time.

But it’s dubious that Foye will be able to manage MTA overtime any better than his predecessors did. Much of the problem is rooted in the union contracts, which are rife with provisions that create overtime opportunities for workers and let seniority determine who gets dibs on overtime shifts. Some of the provisions date back decades and are carried over from one collective-bargaining agreement to the next.

It’s easy to blame the unions, but the state is agreeing to these deals. And some MTA bosses don’t bother to justify extra hours or track whether employees even work them.

Some overtime is necessary in any transit system—emergencies happen. And it is less expensive than adding staff, because new hires get benefits and figure out how to finagle overtime too.

But when a track worker can put in the equivalent of 16 hours a day for 365 days, as the 33-year LIRR veteran did, the system is broken.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who controls the MTA, blessed the deal reached during his first term and took credit for avoiding a work stoppage. He should demand the next one be written from scratch, with overtime minimized and rationally distributed among workers. Supervisors and managers, who oversee an average of just four hourly workers, should be held accountable for excesses.

Foye is a capable executive. But like any MTA head, he’s constrained by politics. Agency execs used to beg editorial boards to support work-rule changes. They stopped when it ceased to be a priority for the governor.

Cuomo is finally pushing for reform, albeit without taking blame. He needs to work overtime to get something done.

© 2019 Crain’s New York Business