Their ship came in.
Fifteen Staten Island Ferry workers are now millionaires after pulling down seven-figure paydays last fiscal year — including one marine engineer who was infamously caught on camera sleeping on the job, putting passengers’ lives at risk, records show.
The windfalls are thanks to the city inking a long-stalled union contract in September 2023 that provided hefty raises for about 170 workers and giant lump sums for 13 years of back pay.
City taxpayers pour at least $108 million a year into the famous free ferry that runs across NY Harbor from St. George to lower Manhattan.
The biggest instant millionaire was Mark Tettonis, a 30-year chief marine engineer who lives in a $1.8 million Bay Ridge home. His base salary is $169,520 — but he pulled down $1,689,518 this past fiscal year.
Chief marine engineer Timothy Wood, another 30-year vet, pocketed $1,559,299. He made headlines for being suspended 30 days and demoted in 2015 after a camera captured him nodding off on the job while the John F. Kennedy boat docked during rush hour.
A judge in 2018 scuttled the sleepy seaman’s demotion, buying the union’s argument that “there is no prohibition on closing your eyes while on duty.”
Tettonis did not respond to requests for comment. A woman who answered Wood’s phone said she didn’t think he’s “allowed to speak” about his seven-figure haul before hanging up.
The city shelled out a whopping $32.7 million alone to 30 current and retired chief marine engineers and project managers, according to a Post analysis of city payroll data for the fiscal year ending June 30.
Back pay, lump-sum bonuses and fringe benefits — more than $21 million worth — made up the bulk of the $32.7 million in payments.
The 30 past and present Department of Transportation employees each pocketed over a half-million bucks — making them the highest-paid city workers last fiscal year. Eighteen became millionaires, including three retirees.
Ken Girardin, research director for Empire Center for Public Policy, called the swabbies’ haul “silly on on several levels.”
“You had a contract hanging out for more than a decade; then you have the city comptroller not only jacking up the so-called prevailing wage, but then also applying it retroactively 13 years — back to when David Paterson was still governor and when ‘Homeland’ and ‘All My Children’ were still on TV,” he said.
“All aboard the S.S. Payday.”
The chief marine engineers largely owe their eye-watering plunders to a decision by NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, who sets and enforces prevailing wage rates for city workers.
In March 2023, Lander determined chief marine engineers should have been raking in $64.61 an hour back in 2010, similar to their private sector counterparts, instead of the $40.32 they were actually making — with their pay rate rising to $79.71 by 2022.
Doug Kellogg, director of the Americans for Tax Reform State Projects, said “you’d think” the parties involved “are engaging in piracy the way they’re looting New York taxpayers.”
“In sad reality, the system is just rigged up to favor a protected class of public employee unions regardless of whether they do their job or nod off,” he said. “It’s this waste and abuse that drives taxpayers away and has the city facing continued $10 billion-plus deficits.”
DOT spokesman Vincent Barone defended the staggering hauls as deserved for mariners who endured many years without any pay bumps.
“Our Staten Island Ferry crews are essential workers providing critical, safe service to more than 15 million passengers each year while having worked without a labor contract for more than a decade,” said Barone.
Lander “determined the prevailing wage and benefits as required by law, and the New York City Office of Labor Relations and the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association negotiated a contract based on that determination,” said the comptroller’s spokesperson Chloe Chik.
The contract — which runs retroactive from November 2010 through January 2027 — will cost taxpayers $103 million, including $53 million in additional expenses, officials said.
