Second MTA time clock sabotaged sets stage for cuomo time clock conspiracy to keep MTA Workers out of nassau otb
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
by vandal in Brooklyn train yard
A second MTA timekeeping device has been sabotaged — this one on the subway.
It follows the vandalism last week of a new employee check-in device that recognizes workers’ fingerprints at the Long Island Rail Road’s Jamaica station in Queens.
That would have prevented cheating workers from getting others to clock them in and out.
The newly sabotaged equipment at the subway’s 38th Street Brooklyn train yard is not as advanced as the fingerprint reader, but is more modern than the ancient time clocks still used elsewhere in the system.
A police source said it’s like the cards passengers are beginning to use — which just have to be held over a scanner.
John Samuelson, President of the Transport Workers of America, said his members had no reason to disable it because only “bosses and supervisors’’ were issued the cards.
But a law-enforcement source said some card holders are eligible for overtime.
It was damaged sometime between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 a.m. Saturday, cops said. “For the second time in one week, MTA timekeeping equipment used to insure accountability and honesty has been vandalized,” MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny said.
“Riders and taxpayers deserve to have a modern system in place to effectively verify when workers arrive at the job and clock out.
“We will not be intimidated by illegal acts of sabotage,” she added.
Just about all MTA facilities — including the subways, LIRR and Metro-North — still use old-fashioned punch cards.
The fingerprint-reading device on the LIRR was taken out of commission by a saboteur even before it became operational, as first reported by The Post.
LIRR workers lead the MTA in cheating on overtime — sometimes putting in for impossible hours that would leave them no time to sleep. OT payments last year jumped nearly 16 percent at the MTA, according to the Empire Center.
Additional reporting by Stephanie Pagones
No comments:
Post a Comment