Up to 50 Port Authority employees are habitually absent anywhere from 40 to 60 days a year, costing the transit system hundreds of thousands of dollars and contributing to unreliable service.

Not including vacation or days off, union and nonunion employees on some form of leave or reporting off work increased from 6 percent to 11 percent of the work force between 2002 and 2007.

Preliminary attendance figures indicate that the pattern among 2,700 employees is continuing this year, making authority administrators increasingly concerned about absenteeism, abuse of the federal Family Medical Leave Act and workers who come to work late.

The statistics were gleaned from absenteeism material the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette requested from the authority.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Bland claims the habitual offenders alone "easily" add more than $500,000 to annual operating costs.

"If we could address 5 percent of our worst cases, we could solve 80 percent of our problem," he said. "We try to identify the offenders. But [firing someone] is incredibly difficult and, if they're union members, those people are usually brought back under arbitration."

The no-show employees not only force the authority to pay more overtime and juggle limited manpower but, more important to transit riders, they're a primary reason why some buses and trolleys run behind schedule or don't arrive at all.

"We do not take exception to people off for legitimate reasons, but there are trends of chronic intermittent absences, especially in certain job classifications," Mr. Bland said. "It's easy to plan service for someone who's on vacation or who's going to be off for a month or two, but not for someone who calls off every other Friday or after every Steelers game."

Patrick McMahon, president-business agent of Local 85, Amalgamated Transit Union, whose members' contract expired June 30, said Mr. Bland never suggested absenteeism, tardiness or sick-leave abuse was a problem when the subject came up at a union-management meeting last year.

He claimed questions being raised now constitute public posturing for cuts the authority seeks in a new labor agreement, including eliminating overtime after eight hours in a day except after an employee works more than 40 hours in a week. The two sides are currently engaged in a state-mandated fact-finding process in order to try to resolve their differences.

Joe Pass Sr., Local 85's legal counsel, said a small percentage of employees always abuse the system in the public and private sectors.

"It's like an iceberg. You cut out the 2 to 3 percent of abusers and another 2 to 3 percent pop up," he said. "That's life anywhere you go."

A 2004 Employment Policy Foundation survey found the two U.S. industries with the highest FMLA costs were transportation and telecommunications.

The authority's array of absenteeism statistics demonstrated how the employee "inactivity rate" has increased, as well as the growing number of people signing on under the Family Medical Act Leave of 1994.

The information revealed that:

• The number of leaves under the FMLA for a maximum of 12 weeks a year for such things as birth of child, a health problem or caring for an immediate family member grew 50 percent from 458 leaves in 2002 to 686 in 2007, using sick days, personal days, vacation days and, when those run out, unpaid days.

• About half of all FMLA absences were "intermittent leaves" ranging from one day to weeks at a time for conditions as minor as recurring colds and earaches, which normally fall under policies covering sick days. Management said such intermittent absences make scheduling difficult and extra overtime necessary.

• On average, one out of three off-board fare collectors failed to report for work on a daily basis in 2004, and one in six last year, leaving light-rail fare booths unattended, thereby slowing service because operators were required to idle at stations while collecting fares on-board in their absence.

• Last year, the authority received 832 applications for FMLA eligibility. A total of 560 employees were approved, or about 21 percent of the work force. They were off the job for a total of 14,507 days. Two-thirds of those off days were by bus and trolley operators whose positions had to be filled through scheduling and overtime, and by employees working an "extra board," a term used to describe extra employees brought in daily to fill in for absentees.

In addition, the authority last year lost 3,684 days for workers injured on duty and/or receiving workers compensation. The average claim was 36.5 days.

On the positive side, management employees and the transit police department have consistently recorded the best attendance and lowest use of the FMLA program year after year.

The absences make it challenging for Allegheny County's transit system to fill service obligations, authority spokeswoman Judi McNeil said.

"Do you add to the extra board [employees], do you throw more overtime out there or do you risk service disruptions?" she said. "Keep in mind that we are not out to condemn the 90 percent of hard-working employees. Nor are we trying to beat up on people with cancer, or babies or other situations where they really do need the FMLA. It's the minority of abusers who complicate our life year after year."

In a letter last year to the U.S. Department of Labor, when it was seeking information about the FMLA, Port Authority FMLA/Attendance Administrator Terry Schneider wrote:

"Unforeseen, intermittent FMLA leave is not only having a negative impact upon our operations but also upon our customers, the general public. The current provisions [in the law] for intermittent leave present a significant burden to schedule-driven operations.

"I've seen employees whose FMLA conditions 'flare up' on each and every holiday or even for the entire week of the holiday. This further demoralizes other workers."

Mr. Schneider called attention to federal rules saying rules defining health conditions that entitle people to provisions of the FMLA are vague and overly broad.

"If the Department of Labor would define 'serious health condition' more clearly, human relations professionals would not have to debate whether the flu, the common cold or an earache is covered," he said, and be a cause for employees to report off work at the last minute.

What some abusers do, Mr. Bland said, is "miss Monday, knowing they can work four hours of overtime Tuesday and make up most of their pay. And, oddly enough, paying overtime, when necessary and justified, is cheaper than adding people to the payroll."

Because of the abusers, he conceded that the authority wants the new contract with Local 85 to preclude paying any overtime until after 40 hours have been worked in a week.

Another demand calls for employees to work the day before and the day after a holiday in order to be eligible for holiday pay.

"If we got the 40-hour rule, I bet we'd see those [chronic absenteeism] numbers drop like a rock," Mr. Bland said. "One of the union responses is that we need to add more people to fill in for vacancies. How about if we just got people in those positions to come to work?"

The Port Authority paid $7.4 million in overtime to union and nonunion personnel last year. It has budgeted almost $9.2 million in overtime for the 2008-09 fiscal year.

The authority uses historical attendance information to determine how many bus-trolley operators should be on the extra board, where they're "on hold" to fill in for no-shows. Typically, because the authority has cut the minimum number, only one or two people on the extra board end up sitting out their shift with no work to do.

Extra boards are commonplace in public and private transportation organizations, including freight railroads.

"The extra board has been cut in half from when I started in 1977," Mr. McMahon said. "There were always people available for whatever happened, to ensure that citizens had no disruption of service. The problem is they don't know how to manage. They want to blame it on the easiest target, the union. It's always the union."

An example of a case of what the authority regards as "pattern absenteeism" involved a woman who had been employed in the maintenance department since 1993 and who suffered from a chronic asthma condition. After she exhausted all of her available paid sick leave and FMLA unpaid leave in 2005, she continued to call off on days adjacent to her scheduled days off.

The authority fired her under provisions of its "progressive discipline policy." Local 85 officials appealed the case and an arbitrator reinstated her in March 2007, saying management erred when it failed to gave her a final written warning in accord with steps stipulated in the policy.

The arbitrator restored the woman's personal days, sick days, holidays, vacation entitlement, withdrawn pension contributions and part of her back pay.

"Sharking," when operators show up for work late and miss their scheduled runs, is another issue affecting the authority's ability to put service on the road on time.

Local 85's contract permits an operator to shark 14 times in a calendar year before receiving a one-day suspension without pay.

"You have some people who show up late for work at every transit system," Mr. Bland said. "It's an egregious issue at the Port Authority. How much leeway should we give?"