Well, here's an interesting little bit of neighborhood drama: Bar Veloce, whose East Village location was once famous for being the scene of a batsh*t crazy kerosene-fueled crime, is once again under attack, but this time from a slightly less dangerous assailant. Someone has been posting incriminating flyers along Second Ave urging patrons to boycott Veloce (which also has a location in Chelsea) because its owners allegedly refuse to pay staff overtime and dip into the staff tip jar on a regular basis. more ›

No wonder people seem to be paying their way into an MTA job: according to a study [pdf] released yesterday, average salaries at the transit agency increased by 3 percent, to $71,237 from 2010, and payroll itself swelled by $71 million, or 1.4 percent, despite the fact that the MTA shed 852 employees last year. According to the Empire Center (i.e. the Manhattan Institute), "For the third consecutive year, more than 10 percent of the MTA's workforce—7,993 individuals—took home $100,000 or more in total pay." Perhaps MTA employees have been working both smarter and harder to make up for the loss of their peers. more ›

Though we looked up from the rabble to jeer at our seersuckered overlords last week, perhaps we should have averted our gaze downward into the subway. Today's Daily News profiles another infamous "pension padder" who made an extra $175,000 in overtime by cashing in sick and vacation days. more ›

Questions about a Sanitation slowdown during the Boxing Day Blizzard aside, many sanitation workers are in position to get hefty overtime payments. Some workers earned around $2,000 for 100 hours of work the week after the blizzard; as one veteran told the Daily News, "That's when we make our money." Oh, and they're not done yet! more ›

Port Authority Police Department Sgt. John Farrell reportedly earned almost $30,000 extra in 16 days, which is causing some confusion. Inspector Kenneth Honig reportedly signed off on 227 hours of overtime for Farrell, which averages to just over 14 hours of OT a day. Add that to an 8 or 9 hour workday and you have almost 24 straight hours of work for over two weeks. When asked why he approved it, Honig told the Post, "Yeah, I authorized it, but so what? The feds are paying." And their money bucket is bottomless. more ›

NY State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced today that he would begin an extensive investigation into questionable overtime payments and possible fraud at the MTA. Last year, an audit found overtime payments increased by 26 percent from 2005 to 2009; it also uncovered that low-level supervisors were assigning themselves overtime, with lax oversight and a dearth of documentation for overtime claims. more ›

An audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that not only have the MTA's overtime payments ballooned by 26% from 2005 to be $560 million last year, but, in a sampling, 77% of the time supervisors approve "undocumented" or "unjustified" overtime. That's potentially over $430 million right there! DiNapoli said that MTA has a "culture of acceptance...Uncontrolled overtime has been the rule rather than the exception at the MTA. The MTA is cutting services, raising fares and tolls and laying-off employees, but it should be doing more to control expenses." more ›

The city tries to project what overtime costs will be, but apparently the projections are way off. The Daily News reports, "The city is set to bust its budget on overtime for cops, firefighters and other uniformed workers, spilling anywhere from $50 million to $140 million in red ink, fiscal monitors are warning." And the biggest chunk is from the NYPD, "with the department's overtime growing each year." Well, those street fairs aren't helping! more ›

Thanks to a bizarre union contract rule, Port Authority cops can actually collect overtime pay if they have been suspended for misconduct. According to the Post, the benefits apply to officers suspended for misconduct with pay, and later cleared. If no formal charges are filed within 120 days, the officer can claim overtime. And they wonder why income spending is up... more ›

On Wednesday, the Empire Center for New York State Policy released payroll data showing over 8,000 MTA employees made over $100,000, including overtime and extra pay, and an overall average pay raise of 2.4%. There's a searchable database of the employees and their salaries, leading to factoids like "Eleven of the 561 employees who earned more than $150,000 in 2009 were Long Island Railroad car repairmen who earned an average of $167,342 - which was $102,477 over their annual base pay rate of $64,865." Yup, overtime is costing a fortune. more ›

MTA officials are locking horns with the Transit Workers Union over rules governing overtime and sick time. The MTA brass says employees have been abusing the system and costing the Authority $560 million annually; part of that big expenditure was caused by the 25% of bus and subway workers took more than two weeks worth of sick days last year. Now the MTA is assigning a task force to crack down on employees who abuse sick days. Of course, the union is up in arms about it. more ›

In order to "significantly reduce expenditures," Governor Paterson has halted overtime payouts for all state agencies. The new measure would save the state just under $20 million of the $9 billion in debt, but Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook told the Daily News, "As we continue to turnover [sic] every stone, this is one of those things." There have been a few cases of overtime abuse in the past few months, and last year overtime spending cost taxpayers $433.3 million. The legislature has already approved Paterson's emergency spending bill, which calls for furloughs on 100,000 state workers. more ›

Overtime is the latest culprit in the the continuing list of stuff that's costing the MTA a boatload, with employees of the LIRR taking the most home. According to data on SeeThoroughNY, some employees were earning $100,000 to $200,000 over their base salaries in overtime. For example, Michael P. Castro earned $156,252 over his $72,100 salary as a senior analyst. The MTA's inspector general is looking into the LIRR's overtime rules, saying in a statement, "Our focus is on continuing to attack our cost structure to find reductions across our agencies including reducing overtime across the MTA." Similar problems have been troubling the Port Authority, which reported $15 million more in income spending last year. A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money! more ›

According to new data released by SeeThroughNY, a part of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's payroll jumped $15 million to $664.7 million from 2008 to 2009. The watchdog group's findings show that most of the extra money comes from overtime pay, with many police supervisors nearly doubling their base salaries. Thomas Hoey, a PAPD sergeant, more than doubled his $107,464 salary in 2009, earning $156,650 extra in overtime. One SeeThroughNY spokeswoman told the Post, "the reason [posted the salaries] is so taxpayers can see how their money is spent." more ›

NFL owners voted 28-4 this week to apply proposed changes to overtime rules in the playoffs. Starting next season, if the coin-toss winning team kicks a field goal, the other team will get the ball. If the game is still tied after that possession, the game will continue under sudden-death rules. According to AP, only Buffalo, Cincinnati, Baltimore and, oddly, Minnesota were against the change. Minnesota lost the NFL championship game to New Orleans in overtime this past season after New Orleans won the coin toss and won with a field goal. more ›

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday that his office would investigate "the manipulation of salary and overtime payments that leads to inflated pensions at the expense of taxpayers," citing various cases of state employees who managed to increase their salaries by 30-167%. Cuomo said, "There is a possibility that it's gaming of the system." more ›

The NFL will be voting next week to change their overtime rules from a sudden-death format, which was adopted in 1974 and which many believe gives an unfair advantage to the coin-toss winner. Almost 60% of the time the coin-toss winner wins the game, which doesn't seem that much to us but is apparently enough to warrant a vote. The proposed rule change would give both teams a chance at possession in playoff games if the team that won the coin-toss kicks a field goal on the first series. NFL Competition Committee Rich McKay tells the Daily News, "We are trying to put in a system that emphasizes more skill and strategy as opposed to the randomness of the coin flip." more ›

The San Gennaro Festival, the Romania Day Festival and the 6th Avenue Summerfest could all fall under Bloomberg’s latest category of cuts. To save the considerable cost of manning city street fairs with NYPD officers (last year there were 321 fairs costing $4 million in overtime) the mayor wants to reduce their numbers. Bloomberg is a long-time fair opponent—he’s said that they’re too numerous and they they’re all the same—but others argue the festivals are integral to city life. “Festivals give people an opportunity to take back the streets so they can walk, listen to music, see their neighbors and buy something if they want," argued fair producer Mort Berkowitz. more ›

Some New Yorkers love the city's spike in parking summonses: the traffic enforcement agents who get paid to write the tickets. A New York Times review of city records found that more than 700 agents increased their wages by 20 percent with overtime in the 2008 fiscal year. Others raised their pay by over 50 percent, and one workaholic even doubled his income. In all, the city coughed up $13 million in overtime pay to traffic agents, on top off $68 million in regular pay. In return, traffic agents generated $578.6 million in revenues for the city in FY08, up from $366.6 million in 2002. One interesting fact in the article; according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, construction sites that disrupt street traffic reimburse the city for the cost of traffic agent overtime. But some critics, like Carol Kellerman of the Citizens Budget Commission, think the city should limit overtime because it obscures "what work force is needed to do the job and what it is being paid." On the other hand, union president James Huntley explains that traffic agents have an insatiable hunger for OT, and "if you take it from them, they might cry." more ›

It takes a lot of work to build the ultimate man cave, especially one housed off a parking garage at Albany's State Capitol by employees of NY State's Office of Government Services. There's upkeep on your card pyramids and the frequent updates to the message on your Lite Brite... it's no wonder that the two state employees who were busted last week for their drug den of board games and pot scales needed so much time to work on their lair that they've racked up a combined $28,400 in overtime over the last five years. more ›

The Long Island Rail Road mechanics making upwards of $200K in annual overtime pay at one Queens yard are doing so because of a forty-year-old loophole, according to a new report. Hopefully the well-compensated LIRR workers have used their hefty paychecks for Times subscriptions because they might not like the treatment they're getting from the Post. The tabloid says that the "grease monkeys" are getting paid to "sleep on the job." The jackpot loophole they're referring to is a rule that states that vacant shifts at the Richmond Hills yard must be filled, no matter if any work needs to be done. The Post says this leads to "hundreds of instances last year when mechanics worked 24 to 32 hours straight, racking up time-and-a-half and double-time pay." After those extra-long shifts, the employees then get another eight hours mandatory pay to go home and sleep. The MTA is currently investigating schedule and pension rules. The Richmond Hills rule has been challenged in two previous negotiations by the LIRR, but an arbitrator upheld it both times. more ›

They may be considered "grease monkeys" by the New York Post, but LIRR mechanics are cleaning up when it comes to overtime pay. One diesel yard in Richmond Hill, Queens saw six of its union mechanics take in $1.5 million in income, mostly from OT and other perks. Leading the way is Ronald Dunne, a car repairman, who made $220k of his $283k in income from overtime and puts him as the fifth highest breadwinner in the MTA. The paper calls the Richmond Hills yard a gold mine, reasonably enough since they mention that Dunne made so much last year that he purchased a set of gold-plated wrenches. A spokesman for the LIRR said, "Antiquated work rules in collective-bargaining agreements have led to excessive earnings at our Richmond Hill maintenance facility by some employees with high seniority," Last year it was revealed that mostly retired LIRR employees have made over $250 million in disability pay this decade. more ›

The FDNY announced yesterday that they would put a ceiling on how much overtime their firefighters could earn. The new cap will limit them to 81 and 1/4 hours per quarter, or 325 hours a year, for certain tasks that do not involve fighting fires or rescuing people. The change should also save on pension costs as well, with firefighters using overtime racked up in their final years to boost the salary used to compute how much their pension payments would be upon retiring. The Post says that with the new regulations, the earnings FDNY's top overtime earner last year would leave him "$65,407 less than he actually pulled in working in the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management and teaching mandated courses in equal employment opportunity." They were also able to find some disgruntled anonymous firefighters unhappy with the decision. One told the paper, "Closing firehouses is ridiculous, and so is cutting back overtime. Something is going to happen soon, and they're going to blame us." more ›

Overtime costs for cops and firefighters are on the rise and City Controller William Thompson doesn't think that the mayor's budget is sufficiently accounting for it. Today Thompson is presenting his report on the budget to City Council and beforehand told reporters, "The city routinely and severely underestimates how much annual overtime will accumulate, and inevitably this widens the budget gap that will need to be closed." Thompson said that the mayor's office is undershooting the OT spending by more than $140 million in a year that saw the city pay out more in overtime than recent ones that saw the blackout, the RNC Convention and sending troops to assist Hurricane Katrina damage respectively. A spokesman for the mayor said that no matter the estimates, the city's budget will be balanced just like any other. Over the weekend, Thompson also compared Mayor Bloomberg's recent comments about the futility of taxing the rich to former President Bush's "trickle-down philosophy." more ›

550 workers who were illegally denied overtime at nine Amish Market gourmet groceries will divvy up nearly $1.5 million as part of a settlement with the state Department of Labor. At a press conference yesterday, Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith detailed the investigation of Amish Market and its related stores: Zeytinia, Zeytinz and Zeytuna. Acting on a tip from union officials, investigators conducted a simultaneous sweep of nine locations throughout the state in June 2007, arriving at the same time to prevent managers from coaching employees or destroying records. The investigation determined that many workers were clocking 45 to 60 hours a week but were not paid time and a half, while new hires often received subminimum wages during a so-called "trial period." Commissioner Smith told reporters, "It’s unfathomable to think that in this day and age—in these frightening economic times—an employer would actually believe it could get away with cheating workers out such an exorbitant amount of their hard earned money." more ›

Empire State residents are feeling the pinch of the slowing economy as a Siena Research Institute poll finds 34% of respondents have either taken a second job or seek overtime. Two thirds are worrying more about money and 74% say rising food prices are affecting their budgets ("67% of shoppers are buying less expensive items, 60% have cut back on treats like cookies or candy in favor of needed items, and 60% are choosing store brands or generic items over name brands"). Researchers believe many are trying to save money for winter heating bills, as 80% are worried about the winter weather. SRI Director Dr. Don Levy said, "Even though more New Yorkers expect the economy to decline than to improve over the next twelve months, by a margin of 49% to 32%, residents think their personal situation will improve.” [Image via Worth1000] more ›

The Gristede’s supermarket chain could be forced to pay $25 million to more than 400 current and former managers who've successfully sued the company for refusing to pay overtime. Last week a federal judge sided with the employees, dismissing Gristede's argument that they were "salaried executives who, under federal and state law, are generally exempt from receiving time-and-a-half pay for overtime," the Times reports. In his decision, Judge Paul Crotty wrote that “Gristede’s clearly sought to treat workers as ‘hourly’ for some purposes, (i.e., docking them for hours not worked during the workweek), but ‘salaried’ for other purposes (i.e., not paying them overtime for hours worked in excess of the workweek).” Naturally, Gristede's plans to appeal, since billionaire owner John Catsimaditis (pictured) is going to need every cent to run for mayor. more ›