An MBTA employee accused of sleeping on the job has been suspended, an agency spokesperson said.

The suspension comes after a video came to light showing an employee sleeping in his car during work hours on what appeared to be multiple occasions. A T employee who asked to remain anonymous shared the video with the Herald.

On Friday, after viewing the video, MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said the employee is off the job for the time being, but would not confirm the job title or name that was provided to the Herald. The employee in question is a bus inspector, according to the source who shot the video.

“The MBTA is committed to delivering high-quality service and takes allegations of employee misconduct seriously,” Pesaturo said in a statement. “This employee has been suspended with pay while the MBTA conducts an investigation.”

Violations of safety-related rules can result in suspensions ranging from three to 70 days, followed by termination, he said in a prior statement.

This employee has no record of previous discipline for sleeping on the job, according to the MBTA.

In an email, the T worker who sent the video said this employee has “repeatedly been caught sleeping on the job.” The lack of action taken to date seems to indicate “collective indifference towards this matter,” and puts riders at risk, the source wrote.

Charlie Chieppo, a transportation watcher with Pioneer Institute, said that if the allegations are true, this particular instance is part of a “long-standing” problem at the T, in regard to employees sleeping at work and not being held accountable.

“Watching these kinds of things, I go back 25 years when the MBTA was trying to get rid of Amtrak as the commuter rail provider, and this kind of thing was happening all the time,” Chieppo said. “But Amtrak had a very close relationship with the MBTA unions and nothing was really done about it.”

The Herald reported last November that 17 MBTA employees were suspended for sleeping or failing to pay proper attention during work hours over a four-year period, from 2019 to 2022.

The data was provided to the Herald after a public records request for “MBTA employees found sleeping during work hours.” It showed suspensions ranging from three to 70 days, with two listed as “final.”

Twelve of the 17 suspended employees were bus operators, two were bus inspectors, and there was one streetcar operator, a subway operator, and an electrical worker, records show.

Those documents extend to Aug. 25, 2022. A public records request for up-to-date disciplinary information is listed as “in progress.”

Pesaturo previously said the 17 suspensions were not necessarily for employees who were sleeping on the job, a disciplinary category that does not exist at the T.

Rather, those employees had violated the “attention to duty rule,” which means they were “deemed to not be giving proper attention to the job duties required for their positions,” Pesaturo said at the time.

Still, prior reporting by the Herald and other media outlets highlights other instances where employees were disciplined for nodding off.

In 2012, the matter seemingly led the MBTA to post a sign at all Green Line terminals, reminding its workers to comply with the “attention to duty rule.” The memo spelled out the rule, concluding that, “An employee must not sleep or give the appearance of sleeping while on duty,” the Herald reported at the time.

That year, a veteran transit police officer was met with disciplinary action after a photo of him dozing at a substation that serves the Mattapan high-speed line and Blue Hill Avenue buses was posted on Twitter by a passenger, according to a prior Herald report.

In 2014, Boston Magazine reported that two transit employees were disciplined for sleeping at work, after the MBTA was alerted to photos that showed the infraction on social media. The publication also cites similar action taken with a different employee in 2013.

Chieppo said the problem is systemic, and one that is “double-barreled” in that it combines a culture of looking the other way with “no-show jobs” and allowing people to work “absurd amounts of overtime.”

As of July 15, six MBTA employees had already exceeded $100,000 in overtime for this year, with another six not far behind at more than $90,000, according to the state comptroller’s office.

In the past, Chieppo said there’s been a lack of accountability when employees failed to show up for the full amount of time they were supposed to be working at the T. That allowed those employees to work other full-time jobs, and get paid at their other jobs while accruing pension time at the MBTA, he said.

“If you look back over the years, you’ll find plenty of people who supposedly were working 80 hours a week with overtime at the T, and then also had other part-time jobs,” Chieppo said. “So clearly, unless they don’t sleep, there is a combination of working a whole lot of hours and falling asleep on the job, with the fact that they can’t possibly be actually showing up for all those hours.”

“It is a very unappealing blend,” he added.

Pesaturo said, “The MBTA treats any reports of work rules violations seriously, and investigates each report. If it’s determined that discipline is warranted, then the MBTA acts accordingly.”