General MBTA Topics (Multi Modal, Budget, MassDOT)

[Riverside]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Don't make this about one maintenance worker. Make this about tens of millions of dollars lost annually to silly loopholes in a union contract.

pennies on the dollar

That. I agree with.

I mean, it's not me alone who's making this about one maintenance worker- his situation is being fixated upon widely and is being generalized out to the whole workforce when, in fact, his situation is, by definition, the most extreme. He could be a moderately distant outlier and we'd have no idea.

As I said, these losses could probably be somewhat reduced by a reasonable renegotiation of the contract.

But there's only so much wiggle room; shifts longer than 8 hours must be treated exceptionally (ie as overtime), just as hours beyond 40 in one week must be treated exceptionally. Cave on that, and you're undoing decades of progress in labor rights. If you, as management, come to the table with that as your goal, you won't get anywhere (and rightfully so).

(All of which is to say, I don't think it's really a "silly loophole" when you come down to it.)

Personally, I bet that this guy is the guy who knows those ancient PCCs best, and they're letting him work his own schedule so that he doesn't throw up his hands and retire. Hence why his application of otherwise reasonable rules creates an unusual outcome.

Of course, the other option would be to remove opportunities for workers to put in so much overtime- ie. hire more workers and hit hard on preventative maintenance, reduce the need for urgent overtime work. This wouldn't be cost-effective on a small-scale, but if the situation really is as widespread as some suggest, it begins to make more sense.

 

[bigeman312]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

I don't think anybody is advocating for people to not be paid overtime when they are working more than 40 hours per week. I think the point is to create a system that doesn't encourage abuse (i.e. take a day off and work a double shift the next day), and doesn't force excessive overtime (i.e. if they are understaffed to the point that, as you hypothesize, one worker is the only guy who knows the ins-and-outs of PCCs).

I engaged in an argument upthread that I won't re-hash about who gets blame. I am done with that (if you want to read back, I bet you will find that we are on the same side of the argument). Now, let's start looking at this as a way for the T to improve operations and cut costs.

Rather than the micro level (why is somebody making so much overtime), let's focus on the macro level (why is the T spending so much on wages). We know they spend above the industry standards. In no way am I proposing turning T workers into slaves. Rather, I think the unions need to be fought so that the T has the ability to cut costs where costs need to be cut. Reform can not only happen on the backs of riders.

EDIT: typos

 

[JumboBuc]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Working more than 8 hours a day should get you overtime. Period. Working longer than an 8 hour shift should also get you overtime. Period.

But there's only so much wiggle room; shifts longer than 8 hours must be treated exceptionally (ie as overtime), just as hours beyond 40 in one week must be treated exceptionally. Cave on that, and you're undoing decades of progress in labor rights. If you, as management, come to the table with that as your goal, you won't get anywhere (and rightfully so).

Overtime pay at >8 hours/day is by no means standard. The Federal standard is overtime at >40 hours/week, and very few industries are more generous than this. If you were to poll all T passengers who work hourly, I'm sure a very small minority of them get overtime at >8 hours/day if they work fewer than 40 hours/week. How can you be "undoing decades of progress in labor rights" if you give up something that most workers don't have?

Imagine you and I both work 40 hours/week at the same job with the same hourly wage and the same half-hour lunch break from 12 to 12:30. If I work 8:30-7 Monday-Thursday and you work 8:30-5 Monday-Friday, why should I get paid 10% more than you?

If a strike results after management comes to the table with a goal of overtime at >40 hours/week and the union insists on >8 hours/day, management will win in the court of public opinion.

 

[underground]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Imagine you and I both work 40 hours/week at the same job with the same hourly wage and the same half-hour lunch break from 12 to 12:30. If I work 8:30-7 Monday-Thursday and you work 8:30-5 Monday-Friday, why should I get paid 10% more than you?

So are you "imagining" a scenario, or do you know this is the real problem at the T?

 

[JumboBuc]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

So are you "imagining" a scenario, or do you know this is the real problem at the T?

Yes, this is (more or less) how it works with the T. It has been covered extensively lately. Employees work more than 8 hours one day, get paid overtime, then work fewer than 8 (or zero) hours other days of the week. They end up working 40 hours or less per week, but still get overtime pay. 43% of T overtime in 2015 was paid out to workers who worked less than 40 hours/week in the relevant pay periods, and 50% of Carmen's Union members used the Family Mecical Leave Act in 2014 compared to only 10% of state workers as a whole (work extra hours one day, get overtime, call in absent under FMLA provisions the next day). This behavior leads to both increased overtime pay and increased absenteeism, since people actually get paid more for regularly calling in sick, assuming they keep their hours/week constant.

I don't mean to demonize T employees, most of whom are doing great work to keep an ancient system running. One can respect the workforce as a whole, however, while acknowledging that some of their perks are destructive to the overall health of the system.

 

[CSTH]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

I'm not gonna get at all worked up about him getting paid well. And it's a red herring- pennies on the dollar to the Big Dig debt.

Let's compare some figures

$32M = "<40hrs" overtime
$72M = total overtime (which includes further FMLA game-playing)
$112M = total T operating deficit in 2014

$49M = High-end of proposed fair increases

$425M = debt service (interest-and-principal) in 2015.

Given these, I'd say that its reasonable to make overtime costs a priority. Don't make the mistake of comparing operating costs with capital costs - to go apples-apples you have to look at the debt service - and the FMLA overtime gaming looks to amount to ~10% of that. Not a game changer, but definitiely part of the solution.

 

[whighlander]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

So are you "imagining" a scenario, or do you know this is the real problem at the T?

Underground -- the data is available for your perusal

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_op...me=&department_name=&order=overtime&sort=desc

27 employees made over $200,000 in 2015 -- none of whom had base pay over $110,000

there were hundreds of others who made well over $100,000 based on huge overtime payments

T employees abusing FMLA leave, which allows workers to take unpaid time off for a serious illness or to take care of a sick relative. The federal leave provision was used by 50 percent of Carmen’s Union members in fiscal 2014 — compared with up to 10 percent in all the state government, according to T officials.

 

[Justin7]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Overtime pay at >8 hours/day is by no means standard.

I didn't even know this was a thing.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Yes, this is (more or less) how it works with the T. It has been covered extensively lately. Employees work more than 8 hours one day, get paid overtime, then work fewer than 8 (or zero) hours other days of the week. They end up working 40 hours or less per week, but still get overtime pay. 43% of T overtime in 2015 was paid out to workers who worked less than 40 hours/week in the relevant pay periods, and 50% of Carmen's Union members used the Family Mecical Leave Act in 2014 compared to only 10% of state workers as a whole (work extra hours one day, get overtime, call in absent under FMLA provisions the next day). This behavior leads to both increased overtime pay and increased absenteeism, since people actually get paid more for regularly calling in sick, assuming they keep their hours/week constant.

I don't mean to demonize T employees, most of whom are doing great work to keep an ancient system running. One can respect the workforce as a whole, however, while acknowledging that some of their perks are destructive to the overall health of the system.

It's impossible to project this across the whole system without knowing which types of employees are doing this, how many, and which ones are union-represented. It's not a uniform workforce at all. The Carmen's Union only covers so many job types. If it's commuter rail and these are Keolis employees whose pay is pass-thru straight to the T's coffers, it's not the Carmen's Union at all...it's 3 different RR unions who aren't a within a million miles affiliated with the Amalgamated Transit Union.

The track maint staff for rapid transit is notoriously short because of hiring freezes and and early retirement packages; they have no choice but to work copious OT when tasked from above with things like this massive winter recovery/prep initiative. And they work tasks that can't reasonably be supplemented by outside contractors, because nobody can do those tasks without years of qualification on the system. Commuter rail, too, although the Keolis intermediary has a lot more options to supplement from the outside. That's a purely executive-decision policy to run short that's costing them way more than if they staffed-up to full strength. But it doesn't fit the narrative because staffing up to full strength means hiring at high salaries for high-skill labor in very competitive job market.

Is it maint staff who are disproportionately racking up the OT? Because that's a management policy problem. Or is it the bus drivers and glut of inspectors auto-promoted when the 3 heavy rail lines went to one-man ops and displaced a lot of train operators? Too much OT on the staff types like inspectors that are in oversupply is more a contractual exploit...but also a lot of lax management not policing the hours when they have enough staff to not need OT. Is it commuter rail conductors oversupplying the off-peak trains? MBCR were notoriously lax at policing that; is Keolis tightening that up like they said they would?

Is this office staff, or non-ops people? They're employees all the same, but back-office (like the ones processing the fare collection) are least likely to be Carmen's Union. Can we even verify if this is a union worker exploit, or is it some union employees and some non-union employees taking advantage of a neutral loophole that management left open? Plenty of non-union jobs at the agency are hourly, not salaried...so if this cuts across ranks it points to a different type of internal rot altogether.


And on and on and on. Where's the reporting on who exactly is doing this in an agency so large and so heterogeneous. We're really being failed by the 4th estate bigtime with their complete inability to dilineate what employment ranks this is coming from to help ID exactly what exploit is being taken advantage of, and how many are doing it to quantify scope of the problem. There's almost nothing we can wrap brain around from the typical "ZOMG! This T schlub makes $100K per year" that lead off Fox 25 Investigates, which is how we get this nihilist "I KNEW IT! STUPID CARMEN UNION" oversimplification from the Herald Nation. It could be a few culprits checkmarked on the list, it could be a little of everything, it could be a combo of some lax management and some union abuse or one encouraging the other. It could be a flat-out bad contract.

We don't know. Nobody is willing to dig. And the Control Board, which has the means to spell this out...isn't. Because it's politically convenient for both the Executive and Legislative branches (but probably more the latter since structural reform is more their responsibility) to speak in constant vagueness.


It stinks. We're the ones being sacked with fare hikes, this shit is being pointed to as one of the reasons...and we don't have anywhere close to a reliable picture of what "this shit" actually is because it's intentionally being withheld by the officials who've itemized it and the media can't AND won't do its basic-ass job asking the questions that get a useful modicum of those answers. Don't know what "this shit" is...end up too divided to make a targeted protest at our institutions to fucking fix it. Political-structural failure all-around with our institutions, who've joined hands in a big kumbaya circle of their own cromulence and give us nothing useful work with.

 

[curcuas]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Should the contract be improved? Probably. I imagine both sides could sit down and come to something reasonable.

This never happens. The last thing public sector unions give up are archaic work rules that allow public employees to earn far above their on paper salary by working copious overtime. They will scream and fight over paying 1-2% of their salary for health insurance, but this is merely a distraction from the work rules that greatly pad their take home pay. This is probably an even bigger issue with the MTA in NYC, where work rules mandate timed shifts that lead to technical overtime every day.

The unwillingness to compromise over work rules is why we haven't standardized on OPTO, or fully automated trains, and still have conductors on commuter trains. These technologies have been in place for decades in Europe, but in the US, work rules have kept us in the 1950s.

 

[JumboBuc]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Obviously the devil's in the details, but an overall approach of more hiring + less overtime seems like such a total no-brainer for creating a more effective workforce, especially in maintenance. Hire and train enough new labor so that existing employees don't face such monumental workloads, and save on the budget as three workers on regular time is cheaper than two on overtime. The problem is that management doesn't want more hiring and labor doesn't want less overtime, so we end up with neither.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Obviously the devil's in the details, but an overall approach of more hiring + less overtime seems like such a total no-brainer for creating a more effective workforce, especially in maintenance. Hire and train enough new labor so that existing employees don't face such monumental workloads, and save on the budget as three workers on regular time is cheaper than two on overtime. The problem is that management doesn't want more hiring and labor doesn't want less overtime, so we end up with neither.

Bingo. For example, with maintenance OT vs. the 8-hour rule. . .track gangs are in short supply, and work is scheduled as discrete jobs. A worker may have to work OT over one weekend where, say, service on the Orange Line is truncated at Wellington at 9:00pm on a Saturday to afford the track gang extra hours to replace the outbound 3rd rail for winter prep. 8 hours on the ground + 4 hours of before/after time prepping and un-prepping the site for the blitz during track shutdown = 12-hour shifts on consecutive nights. And they don't have extra staff they can cycle in midway through the night to keep the dozen guys working to under 8 hours. Then during the week there's nothing major scheduled on the overnight so a couple maint staffers get to go home early...and some of them work short shifts around the yard office to physically recover from all that heavy-lifting they did over the weekend and prepare for all the heavy lifting they do next installment of that replacement work next weekend.

They pocket 4 days of big OT on consecutive weekends, but work less-than 40 hours because the work isn't scheduled during the week. Nature of the beast, and these are some of the highest-paid grunt workers on the system because of the extremely high skill level required and fact that they get job offers from NYC Subway, from Amtrak, from private contractors all the time. That's not a structural flaw with the employee contract. If there's a finger to point it's chronic under-staffing and the agency cutting its nose to spite its face.


Totally different if you've got 30 inspectors who used to be train operators who got big pay raises because there was nothing for them to do after OPTO got rolled out on Red/Orange/Blue. And there's so many of them that all sorts of abuse of the 8-hour rule is possible. Some will have nothing to do and work < 40. And some will take regular turns doing some jobs that last >8 hours (because some of the ride-along and yard inspections are more intensive than the guys standing around station platforms, and they rotate jobs). Some of the bus inspectors have large territories they have to cover to do inspections at depots scattered around the fringes of the system. Some don't. Who on the seniority scale is jockeying for what positions? Are the higher-paid inspectors with more seniority gaming the system by taking a long-duration assignment one day of the week to rack up some OT, then an easy one another day that sends them home early? Who's responsible for this?...is the supervisor that's allowing the schedules to be drawn up this way not minding the efficiency, or is it a contractual job perk that above a certain level of seniority an inspector gets way more leeway to choose the week's itinerary?

Yeah, ^that^ is rooted in an unusually favorable and archaic 8-hour clause in the union contract that should be phased out. But is the clause at fault for the actual $$$ damage bill in the overruns, or is the lax administration of inspector staffing schedules the reason why it's costing that much? Does any union clause about senior inspectors gaining God-given right to choose their own schedules and run roughshod over loopholes become a much bigger problem than the 8-hour rule, and first contract loophole that needs to be closed? Did the auto-promotion rule for displaced train operators when Red/Orange/Blue went OPTO flush the employee numbers so full a seldom-exploited loophole became heavily-exploited? Is all of this feeding off itself? Does there need to be a different rule for maint staff where the 8-hour rule is structurally unavoidable--and sometimes beneficial for rest between heavy jobs and compliance with OSHA regs--and inspection staff that don't perform physical labor?


We don't know, because all that gets reported is monolithic "Carmen's Union employees are working >8-hour shifts and < 40-hour weeks", followed by explosion of outrage. There's no number-crunching that can be done to game out reductions in that cost because a who/why/where isn't attached to it and there's no way to ID a source for the exploit. Could be short-staffing with some people, overstaffing with others, management quid pro quos with others, a seniority issue and bad perks therein with others...and the precise division of that pie being the warping agent for the total damage bill to the agency.

We don't fucking know because nobody's digging, and thus the public doesn't have the tools to rake the right people over the coals for focusing/not-focusing on what they should be. Opaqueness is cover for status quo, both for the abusers and the motivation level of the political institutions capable of doing something about it.

 

[underground]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Underground -- the data is available for your perusal

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_op...me=&department_name=&order=overtime&sort=desc

Well, that doesn't go to the question at all, but thanks for posting info we already had over again.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

And yet, sick time abuse has always been something that good management would be on top of. It was a huge issue in the airlines in the early 1990s. "Hire more people" is one of those solutions that only works if they actually show up for their regular shifts. The airline solution was a mix of carrot (lottery for new cars for perfect attendance, and various lower awards) and stick (tracking/follow-up) and peer pressure (extra lottery entries if your whole team has high attendance).

The big thing that lets you know that sick time was bogus was that the techniques above actually did work to reduce sick time / absenteeism. They were not a cure for illness, they were a cure for a sick attitude. The point of singling out gross abusers (who do it 52 weeks a year), is to show that such abuse is possible, and even an employee who is "10 times more honest" may be doing the sick/overtime dance 5 weeks a year. Even that is too much.

 

[datadyne007]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

So, how about that $7.5 billion SoGR backlog?

 

[Arlington]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

So, how about that $7.5 billion SoGR backlog?

Is that $7.5b with or without overtime?

 

[JeffDowntown]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Is that $7.5b with or without overtime?

It is probably an estimate the T got from White-Skanska-Kiewit using their stellar estimation (and cost accounting) methods.

 

[whighlander]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Well, that doesn't go to the question at all, but thanks for posting info we already had over again.

Uground that was because the previous post didn't see any data

But the really pernicious part of the scam why its Bulgeresque in its imagination is the pension system aspect

No one outside of the T Pension Board has ever seen a real accounting of that Ponzi Scheme perpetrated on the Taxpayer

However, enough has leaked to allow the overall framework of the scam to be elucidated:

The huge overtime earnings in a given year is just the necessary investment in working time by the T employee to reap the huge bonus in Pension

You work 3 heavy overtime years and then you retire -- the pension is based on the 3 highest paid years ostensibly to incorporate increased pay for increased responsibility and increased skill base

But if you work for 3 years and make about $300,000 extra over those 3 years of heavy overtime -- well you will get a pension far in excess of that which you would have earned over say a 25 year career with normal escalation

Couple the Pension-side of the scam to the abuse of the Family Medical Leave Act -- and throw in the 8 hour threshold for overtime irrespective of your total hours.

So heres a scenario that you can take to the bank -- you call in sick on a snowy Monday with the FMLA, then the next 3 days you work 10 hour days for 30 hours toltal and then take a sick day before a 3 day weekend. Tou would end up with 24 regular hours and 6 @ time and one half overtime equival;ent to 9 hours-- and we have something straight out of Athens or maybe Senator Sanders Presidential campaign promises

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Uground that was because the previous post didn't see any data

But the really pernicious part of the scam why its Bulgeresque in its imagination is the pension system aspect

No one outside of the T Pension Board has ever seen a real accounting of that Ponzi Scheme perpetrated on the Taxpayer

However, enough has leaked to allow the overall framework of the scam to be elucidated:

The huge overtime earnings in a given year is just the necessary investment in working time by the T employee to reap the huge bonus in Pension

You work 3 heavy overtime years and then you retire -- the pension is based on the 3 highest paid years ostensibly to incorporate increased pay for increased responsibility and increased skill base

But if you work for 3 years and make about $300,000 extra over those 3 years of heavy overtime -- well you will get a pension far in excess of that which you would have earned over say a 25 year career with normal escalation

Couple the Pension-side of the scam to the abuse of the Family Medical Leave Act -- and throw in the 8 hour threshold for overtime irrespective of your total hours.

So heres a scenario that you can take to the bank -- you call in sick on a snowy Monday with the FMLA, then the next 3 days you work 10 hour days for 30 hours toltal and then take a sick day before a 3 day weekend. Tou would end up with 24 regular hours and 6 @ time and one half overtime equival;ent to 9 hours-- and we have something straight out of Athens or maybe Senator Sanders Presidential campaign promises

I put a diagonal on the Herald Copypasta Buzzword Bingo board from that post. What do I win?

 

[underground]

Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?

Uground that was because the previous post didn't see any data

So to make up for lack of data, you posted irrelevant data? If you could stop wasting space on this board, it would be greatly appreciated by all.