Jun 2, 2010

$239,000 Conductor Among M.T.A.’s 8,000 Six-Figure Workers

This is just sad. Chairman Walder appears to be making a very skilled attempt to direct the public's anger away from the MTA's bloated management and towards its rank-and-file employees. Judging by this article, his efforts appear to be paying off. The other week newspapers ran headlines about bus operators taking long leaves after being spit on. Oops, it turned out that almost *none* of the bus operators actually did this and it was only a few employees out of tens of thousands. But mission accomplished for Jay Walder - the public now thought of hard-working bus operators as malingerers. Now this article dutifully skips the management and goes again right to the line workers. "The usual top-level managers are included in that list" the article says but only lists the two agency's top executives at the bottom of the article as an afterthought. What about all the other management that makes more than $100,000 per year? The article doesn't say. One has to wonder why not.

The MTA thinks the board owns the agency and should run it as a business. That is for the benefit of the board.