Maintenance worker was highest paid T employee in 2015 at $315,000
The MBTA’s highest paid employee in 2015 took in $315,000—with a base pay of $85,000—a T official said Monday.
The employee, a maintenance worker, totaled more than 2,600 hours in overtime pay during the year, MBTA Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve said. The employee also received $59,000 in retroactive pay through his labor union. Overall, the employee, who Shortsleeve did not name, was paid for nearly 90 hours of work per week through the first 50 weeks of the year.
The information was shared by Shortsleeve at a Monday meeting of the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board. The employee was one of two on the T’s payroll to make $300,000 or more this year.
Board chairman Joseph Aiello said he found it difficult to “believe that, unless you’re Superman, that you can work this number of hours this consistently and still perform at the highest level.’’
Twenty-four percent of the T’s workforce—about 1,550 employees—made $100,000 or more this year, including overtime and retroactive pay, according to Shortsleeve. And 27 employees made $200,000 or more in 2015.
In just base pay, 282 employees made $100,000 this year, between 190 union workers and 92 executive-level workers, he said.
Shortsleeve said 2015 compensation was “big’’ in two ways: the amount of overtime pay, which he said was affected by the winter’s snow onslaught, and the retroactive pay. Members of four unions received retroactive pay for between three and five years based on arbitration awards.
T officials have in the past said reducing absenteeism and hiring more part-time employees would help cut down on overtime pay. Last fiscal year, the T paid about $11 million in unplanned overtime, due to unscheduled absences or to cover for unfilled positions.
The data shared by Shortsleeve also showed that MBTA rail operators are paid $35.58 per hour, or $3.75 more per hour than the average of their peers in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles. Bus operators were paid $4.14 more than operators at those agencies, at $35.99.
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