Rep. Marty Moylan, D-Des Plaines, recently told me he was
“astonished” by some Chicago Transit Authority employee paychecks.
Moylan, the chair of the House Transportation: Rail
Systems, Roads & Bridges Committee, is heading into the transit funding
discussions armed with an inch-and-a-half-thick binder filled with CTA salary
data. The agency’s gross payroll for all employees in 2024 was close to $ 1 billion.
Eight unionized CTA workers made more than $300,000 last
year, and about 160 made more than $200,000, according to documentation posted
online by the Regional Transportation Authority.
One of the CTA’s top-paid employees, a line worker with a
base pay of $62.10 an hour, earned $347,363 in 2024. Normally he’d earn
$129,168 per year for a standard 40-hour work week. To reach his 2024 total
payout, the line worker would have had to work an extra 45 hours each and every
week at time-and-a-half or an extra 34 hours at double-time every week to reach
his final 2024 income level.
These are all rough estimates which don’t account for
on-call/standby payments, holidays, vacations or bonus pay.
An ironworker was paid $287,602 at $59.26 per hour last
year. That employee would’ve had to work an extra 35 hours at time-and-a-half
or 27 hours at double-time each and every week.
Another employee, a customer service representative
earning $40.38 per hour, was paid $273,593, putting that staffer at an extra 60
hours per week at time-and-a-half or an extra 45 hours every week at
double-time.
The Chicago area’s mass transit agencies are facing a
combined “fiscal cliff” of $730 million in Fiscal Year 2026 that will rise to
$1.2 billion over the following five years. But, declared Moylan, “This is
going to be very hard for them to make the case that they need a billion
dollars if there is no accountability on overtime.”
“I think there’s vast amounts of mismanagement here,”
Moylan said. “Some people are taking advantage of the system. We need to get to
the bottom of this, especially if they’re asking for a billion dollars.”
Moylan said he wants more transparency on overtime,
including an explanation for why supervisors are signing off on so much of it.
Last month, Moylan submitted a Freedom of Information Act
request to each transit agency requesting the total amount paid for overtime,
remote work and their operating budgets. Moylan claimed he’s heard some workers
are “getting overtime for (being on) standby for 12 hours a day.”
A CTA spokesperson denied Moylan’s claim, stating no CTA
employee is “ever paid time-and-a-half or double-time to be on standby,”
adding, “A limited number of employees are strategically deployed at targeted
times to be on call as needed to maximize service delivery to customers.”
Moylan said the CTA must change “immediately.” He has
repeatedly said in the past that he will not call any transit bill for a vote
without significant agency reforms.
“We’ve had numerous complaints about (train safety),
they’re not clean, there’s smoking, crime,” Moylan said.
Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter told the
Senate Transportation Committee later in the week that the CTA needs better
management and coordination and more workers to reduce reliance on overtime.
“Overtime is driven by not having enough folks to do
those services,” Reiter said. “Believe me, the amount of overtime you have to
work to make the kind of money that people say is like, ‘Oh my gosh’… That
person’s making a lot of sacrifice in their personal life.”
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 President Pennie
McCoach followed up by telling the committee that CTA employees are often “pretty
much forced” to stay beyond their shifts.
“(It’s the) policy that is put in place by CTA. If you
are working eight hours and the next person doesn’t come to work, then you’re
forced to stay there another eight hours, so it’s more so the policy of CTA,
not the workers,” McCoach said.
The CTA spokesperson described the CTA as a “lean and
efficient” organization and said the CTA has the lowest operating cost per
vehicle revenue hour and lowest public funding per trip compared to its peer
agencies
This article appears in The future of electric vehicles.
