Base salaries probably give an especially incomplete picture of total compensation for union workers, where overtime pay can be 4x your base, and benefits are nearly "cop from the 50s" insane.
If you're doing surprise holiday night-shift overtime, you should probably be getting paid 3x your base rate.
Comparing the annual salary of someone who clocks in their 9-5, and goes home on Thanksgiving and Christmas, compared to someone who is doing 60 hours a week, twenty of them from 3 am to 9 am, on Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday... Is comparing apples to oranges. [1] But it sure drives the outrage! Look, and be outraged at the annual take-home of that bus driver! Ignore the part where he worked like a dog, and gave up all life outside work for it!
Rates for hour worked, in equivalent conditions are the only fair comparison. And, unsurprisingly, they aren't high for MTA employees - especially in a city as outrageously expensive as NYC.
If you want to stop paying public servants overtime, then don't expect public servants to work outside of core business hours.
[1] Most salaried employees don't do unpaid overtime, period. Overtime, even paid overtime, is incredibly shitty, doubly so for holiday and night shift work, triply so for holiday night shift work. People should be compensated more for doing the same job at 2 am on Christmas Saturday, then for doing a 9-5 on Tuesday. [2]
[2] If your job expects regular unpaid overtime from you, you should either have an ownership stake in it, or get a new job, or have a really high on-paper salary.
>> [1] Most salaried employees don't do unpaid overtime, period.
At least half of tech workers I know do unpaid overtime. Almost all are on at-will contracts where they can be laid off anytime and I know almost none who have lifetime-final-year salary pension plans.
1. That overtime is usually rare. Half of all tech workers don't have to be at work for every night shift, through holidays, and weekends. The buses, on the other hand, have to keep running, even after 5 PM on a Friday rolls around.
1.1. Even if you're an auxiliary on-call, you only need to work if something comes up. You don't need to be physically working, all through the night.
1.2. If you're constantly crunching, every week, you need to find another job, or demand non-meaningless equity, or higher wages, then your tech-worker peers, who do their 9-5. Most mature tech companies are full of people who do their 9-5. They employ hundreds of thousands of tech workers.
2. Tech workers are a tiny subset of the working population.
2.1. They also have much higher on-paper compensation then their similarly-trained peers in other fields (Bachelor's degree, and 0-5 years work experience), and even despite the occasional overtime, much higher hourly rates.
Comparing the annual salary of someone who clocks in their 9-5, and goes home on Thanksgiving and Christmas, compared to someone who is doing 60 hours a week, twenty of them from 3 am to 9 am, on Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday... Is comparing apples to oranges. [1] But it sure drives the outrage! Look, and be outraged at the annual take-home of that bus driver! Ignore the part where he worked like a dog, and gave up all life outside work for it!
Rates for hour worked, in equivalent conditions are the only fair comparison. And, unsurprisingly, they aren't high for MTA employees - especially in a city as outrageously expensive as NYC.
If you want to stop paying public servants overtime, then don't expect public servants to work outside of core business hours.
[1] Most salaried employees don't do unpaid overtime, period. Overtime, even paid overtime, is incredibly shitty, doubly so for holiday and night shift work, triply so for holiday night shift work. People should be compensated more for doing the same job at 2 am on Christmas Saturday, then for doing a 9-5 on Tuesday. [2]
[2] If your job expects regular unpaid overtime from you, you should either have an ownership stake in it, or get a new job, or have a really high on-paper salary.