328 LIRR workers made more than $100,000 in overtime last year, reports says

The Long Island Rail Road employed 328 workers who made more than $100,000 in overtime last year — more than any other agency at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to newly released data.

Of 801 MTA employees making six figures in overtime in 2025, 41% worked for the LIRR, according to a payroll report compiled by the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany-based conservative-leaning think tank. The average LIRR employee made $32,988 in overtime last year — behind only MTA Bridges & Tunnels workers, who made $53,626 in OT on average.

Average total pay for LIRR employees in 2025 was $127,808, according to the report. About half of those workers are in line to get raises totaling about 15% over four years under a new contract settlement that ended a three-day LIRR union strike last month.

MTA officials have blamed high overtime, in part, to restrictive work rules that allow workers to pile up overtime hours. LIRR President Rob Free, in a statement, said the unions "refused to change work rules that have exacerbated overtime and they went on strike to prevent common sense reform."

Free added that the railroad is "committed to managing reductions in overtime that limit the financial burden on riders and taxpayers."

Gilman Lang, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen —the union representing LIRR train operators — said because his members don’t schedule their own hours, high overtime rates are the result of management failures and inadequate staffing.

“The hard-working men and women meet the railroad’s staffing obligations whenever and wherever called upon, regardless of it being scheduled or unscheduled work,” said Lang, adding that his members would gladly work shorter days in exchange for the railroad hiring more engineers.

Thirty-four MTA workers made at least $200,000 in overtime in 2025 — 11 more than in the previous year — including three workers whose total annual earnings topped a half-million dollars, according to the report.

The MTA’s top overtime earner for the second consecutive year was Bridges & Tunnels lieutenant Lee Edwin, whose $359,794 in overtime brought his total 2025 earnings to $528,809. Representatives from Edwin's union, the Bridge and Tunnel Officers Benevolent Association, did not respond to a request for comment.

Overall, the MTA spent $1.46 billion in overtime in 2025, according to the Empire Center — about 8% more than in 2024 and the highest ever for the transit authority in a single year.

The overtime bill represented about 17% of all compensation for the MTA’s 62,000 employees.

High overtime costs have been a persistent issue at the MTA for years, leading in 2019 to multiple investigations, indictments and the eventual conviction of five workers on fraud charges for lying about overtime they didn't earn. That year, the MTA adopted several reforms aimed at reducing overtime costs, including biometric time clocks that required employees to scan their fingers at the beginning and end of their work day.

After the MTA temporarily suspended the finger-scanning requirement amid sanitary concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and replaced it with an ID card scanning requirement, some LIRR workers began using counterfeit ID cards to scan each other into and out of work, according to an MTA inspector general's investigation last year. The MTA reinstated the finger-scanning requirement in September 2024.

At a state budget hearing in February, MTA Chairman Janno Lieber defended the transit authority's overtime spending, which he noted had fallen as a percentage of the MTA's overall budget in recent years. He said increases in total overtime are, in part, attributable to contractual wage increases. 

Lieber also drew a distinction between "good overtime and bad overtime," with the former being used to carry out infrastructure work outside of rush hours.

MTA budget documents attributed the higher-than-expected overtime costs to other factors, including "safety/security/law enforcement" at the MTA Police Department, "vacancy/absentee" coverage among New York City subway and bus workers, and "weather emergencies and unscheduled maintenance" at the Long Island Rail Road.

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.