Ohio Turnpike Offers Buyouts To Toll Collectors

Monday, November 16, 2009
Topics: Economy, Politics, Health, Other
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Turnpike officials want to trim staff in the wake of the newly installed electronic EZ PASS system. Ideastream's Bill Rice reports.

EZ PASS lanes went into operation across the state on October first, but Turnpike officials have been preparing for a reduction in staffing since quite a while before that.  Executive Director George Distel says in the 18 months he’s been in the post the equivalent of about 25 full time toll collectors have left, and he’s hired no new full-timers and just a handful of part time employees to fill vacant shifts. 

All collectors are eleigible for buyouts - 35 thousand dollars for full timers, and five, ten or fifteen thousand for part-timers depending on how long they’ve been employed.  Distel hopes to reduce the workforce by the equivalent of thirty to forty full time collectors.

Distel:  “Our intentions are obvious.  We do not want to have any layoffs, so we are trying to come up with a way to reduce our toll collector workforce without creating any unemployment.”

Toll collectors make more than 20 dollars and hour - which for a full time employee is about 70 thousand dollars a year when combined with benefits.  They’re represented by the Teamsters Union.  Their current contract expires in January of 2011.