NJ Transit pays train workers $200,000 salaries — Why can’t they hire?

WKXW, New Jersey 101.5, Trenton ^ | October 7, 2018 | David Matthau and Sergio Bichao

[Olog-hai]

Need a career change? NJ Transit is hiring — and the job comes with big bucks.

The nation’s second-busiest rail system has been struggling to keep its trains running on time, sometimes canceling as many as two dozen a day.

Officials blame this commuting nightmare in part on a lack of engineers — the people who operate the trains. The shortage is exacerbated whenever a slew of engineers call out sick.

The agency has been scrambling to fill training classes with recruits. Prospective job applicants might jump at the opportunity when they find out just how much the job pays.

The median engineer pay at NJ Transit is nearly $122,000 a year. But a handful make even more. Much more.

A New Jersey 101.5 analysis of the agency’s nearly 11,200-employee payroll finds that five engineers and five conductors made more than $200,000 last year in base pay and overtime.

Another 10 engineers and five conductors also topped $200,000 thanks to retroactive pay awarded in the 2016 contract negotiation that averted a shutdown. …

[jmacusa]

Wow. So you know the area. Yeah. I remember the days of the old Eire Lackawana Railroad. Me and my friends used to walk out east towards NYC along those rail road tracks. Lot of marsh land out there then as now. Playing along rr tracks. Jeez. We could have been killed. Crazy kids.