LIRR says it's guarding against more time theft after report

The Long Island Rail Road has taken several measures, including installing cameras near time clocks, to combat employee time abuse like that uncovered in an MTA watchdog investigation into a counterfeit employee ID card ring involving 36 workers, the railroad’s president said Thursday.

As first reported in Newsday, a report by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Inspector General’s Office — an independent oversight agency — accused three dozen LIRR workers, including seven supervisors, of buying a machine on Amazon and producing, distributing and using counterfeit employee ID cards. Employees swiped the cloned badges at time clocks at three LIRR facilities — in Ronkonkoma, Queens and Manhattan — to cover up for the absences of their co-workers, some of whom "would routinely leave LIRR property for up to two hours in the middle of their shifts for personal activities, including meals at home or workouts at the gym," according to the report from the office MTA Inspector General Daniel Cort.

In their report, investigators cited the "lack of adequate and effective supervision" as a contributing factor in the "culture of fraud and time abuse" among some LIRR employees.

The head of the LIRR electricians union — whose members were not implicated in the scheme — agreed that the actions of the accused workers "did not take place in a vacuum."

"The IG report underscores the LIRR’s lack of accountability and oversight," said Jeff Klein, general chairman of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 589. "Measures to address the problem should have been implemented much earlier."

LIRR President Robert Free said he was "shocked and angered" over the scheme and the railroad has enacted several measures to prevent further employee time theft.

"We’ve strengthened our infrastructure. We’ve installed cameras at time clocks. We’ve installed cameras at entrance points," Free said in an interview at the railroad’s Jamaica headquarters Thursday. 

The railroad has also mandated regular audits of worker facilities by managers to ensure "employees are where they’re supposed to be," and sought to educate its work force about proper attendance recording procedures in employee orientation sessions and "roundtable" discussions with unions.

"It’s a wholistic approach that we’re taking to this to show that it’s not acceptable," Free said. He also said the railroad imposed "strong and decisive" discipline against the workers, including unpaid suspensions, forfeiture of accrued earnings for employees who have resigned and retired, and pursuing termination for some employees.

It’s not the first time Metropolitan Transportation Authority leaders have promised reforms to address employee time abuse. Responding to concerns over unusually high overtime rates among some workers, the MTA in 2019 installed biometric time clocks that required employees to scan their fingers at the start and end of their shifts. But the transit authority months later suspended the finger-scanning requirement because of COVID-19 sanitary concerns and did not reinstate it until September of last year. 

Free on Thursday defended the MTA’s decision to hold off on reinstating the finger-scanning requirement, saying "there were a lot of unknowns" about COVID, and MTA officials "wanted to make sure we protected our employees." Once the agency was ready to return to finger-scanning, it took some time to work with the time clock developers to make sure the system was up to date, Free said.

That the latest scheme was hatched even after four LIRR workers were convicted of fraud for lying about overtime signals "a problem with the culture in the place," said Cameron Macdonald, general counsel for the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative Albany think tank.

"This isn’t just something on the edges ... This is another level of abuse and fraud on the public," Macdonald said. "It’s a shame that taxpayers and commuters should be expected to be paying for security cameras at time clocks in order for the MTA to police its workforce."

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.