I know everyone was trying to figure out earlier how someone could work 2,648 hours of overtime. Here’s the answer.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2016/01/t_loophole_allows_fat_ot_paydays
MBTA bosses admitted yesterday that nearly half of the money they spent on overtime went to T employees who weren’t even clocking in for a full work week — thanks to a sweetheart union perk that can mean big paydays for workers.
The MBTA doled out nearly $32 million — or 43 percent of OT spending in fiscal 2015 — to staffers who worked fewer than 40 hours the same week they received overtime pay, new agency data shows.
The T’s top earner in 2015 worked more than twice as many overtime hours as regular hours, records show. The maintenance worker, whose annual pay rate was only $85,000, raked in more than $315,000 last year by banking 2,648 hours of overtime. In contrast, he worked fewer than 2,000 hours of straight time — the equivalent of less than 40 hours a week.
According to Herald calculations based on T records, the maintenance staffer would have had to work nearly 13 hours per day every single day of the year in 2015 to compile the 4,623 total hours that the MBTA says he spent on the clock.
It could not be determined whether the maintenance worker earned overtime by using a sick leave loophole popular among T employees and allowed under the union contract.
According to officials, the loophole works like this: A T employee calls in sick and then picks up overtime shifts later in the same week, punching in for roughly the same number of hours — or less — at the higher OT rate.
MBTA staffers who call in sick can also earn overtime during the same week by working more than eight hours during a single shift — even if they only work half their normal hours that week. That’s because union contracts don’t require MBTA workers to hit 40 hours in a work week before earning overtime.
“To some extent, absenteeism and overtime are linked,” said MBTA Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve. “One of the things that we started on over the summer … is a whole set of new leave policies.”
A Herald investigation last year revealed 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.
The agency announced that a MassDOT internal auditor is scrutinizing T overtime, a move that comes after Gov. Charlie Baker and members of the MBTA Fiscal Management and Control Board called for OT audits last month.
MBTA overtime spending has skyrocketed — jumping from $61 million in 2014 to $75 million in 2015, according to the T.
I just want to contrast this information with the all the unrestricted calls on BMG to give the T more money, and the BMG deriding of Gov Baker when he said he needed more information on MBTA spending before committing more resources. Maybe it does need more money, but that money needs to go to what will actually improve service, not into OT loopholes.
It’s stories like this that will continue to build support for his efforts to actually fix “stuff.”
The MBTA will continue to decline until it (a) receives enough revenue to fund its operations, including maintenance and capital improvements, and (b) is managed in a businesslike way. None of Bakers proposed reforms address either of these conditions in a substantive way, probably because he doesn’t consider the MBTA particularly important to his electoral future. His new board is a cosmetic change, not a substantive one. Personally, as I’ve said before, I think the system should be privatized with the state maintaining voting control, listed on the stock exchanges, and allowed to develop real estate in and around its stations. Massively increasing its public funding might also be a solution — it works in some countries — but will likely be inefficient as this story demonstrates (but everyone already knew). The status quo, however, means a continued drag on the Greater Boston economy and a further decline in our competitiveness relative to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and even Los Angles, which is making massive investments in public transit.
I agree major changes are necessary. I don’t think privatization is politically possible here in Pacheco land.
Privatization doesn’t always result in better service or lower costs. The commuter rail’s private operator isn’t a shining example of marketplace efficiency either. Granted, even Beverly Scott complained about Pacheco tying her hand in some managerial decisions. But the intent of the law is a good one, preventing a lesser or costlier service from being outsourced on the assumption a private operator is better.
The overall system is still owned and run by the MBTA. Reorganizing the commuter rail as a private listed company, controlled by the Commonwealth, free to leverage its real estate holdings and rail transportation monopoly into profitable ventures and we’d have a chance at generating the billions in ongoing investment the system needs and building a virtuous circle. Outsource operations for a fixed term and it becomes a fee-based business with limited opportunities to create capital and predictable, and observable, results.
That’s a car centric metropolis if there ever was one, if they can figure out a way to revive their dormant rail legacy, so can the first city in North America to have a subway system.
I am in full agreement that Baker’s is committed to cosmetic changes, that the voter constituency for the T isn’t there yet, and that we need massive public investment of the kind LA voters enabled. Whether the system is privatized or no, it should be run like a business and free of the cronyism and patronage that is the hallmark of too many government services in the Commonwealth. These abuses are a drop in the bucket compared to the decades of malign neglect that legislatures and governors bestowed upon this system, but they need to be eliminated to regain public trust and confidence for sustaining and expanding this critical economic asset.
it’s hard to sort out from the Herald article, but it sounds like T workers get overtime if they work more than eight hours in a day. I’m so old I can remember when that was how OT was supposed to work.
50% of the Carmen’s Union does sound high for family medical leave, but I would also guess that T drivers skew younger than other state employees.
If this loophole is being abused, that is worth discussing, but the article hasn’t proved anything. It cites one case, and says “It could not be determined” if he was using it.
Come on Herald, you should be having fun whacking the Globe this week!
there’s able evidence the abuse stretches into tens of millions of dollars.
The same public the MBTA will need to support additional revenue. Which is why fixing it is important.
As do I. We know it needs to be fixed.
I’m happy to concede your point that widespread abuse, if it exists, should not. I’m just not convinced by the Herald on this. The other part of riding the T is seeing the people who work for it. Nobody looks happy about it.
…is that the T doesn’t need fare hikes either.
I respect your skepticism Jim C, but Merrimack Guy makes a very important point. If we are going to ask taxpayers to pay higher taxes to fund the $7 billion required to keep the T sustainable, we have to have an honest conversation about the service they are getting. This should be the crown jewel of our state government, not an also ran transit authority lagging behind our peers and competitors with a public perception that it is a backwater bastion of patronage and fraud.
Tens of millions is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions needed, so is the hundreds of thousands if the Herald’s numbers are way off and the abuse is minor. But we should have a zero tolerance towards this and steer the conversation towards the real crisis instead of downplaying the significance of this one. A single hack can undermine the entire public confidence in their government, from the Brownies of the world to the bad driver on the Red line.
Bingo!
Basic question for those who wish an expanded, efficient and well functioning metropolitan system:
Which should come first? Service to MBTA riders or service to the employees?
…Service to the MBTA riders should always come first.
Yes, service to the employees is important also: for morale reasons; because quality employees need to be hired and retained; because a positive work environment promotes better service to customers.
But when put toe to toe, looking to see which comes first, the goal should always be to ensure service to the MBTA riders comes first.
Nonsense. You’re presenting a false choice. Riders deserve safe, reliable service. Employees deserve a safe workplace and fair wages. You’re suggesting that the only way to have one is to lose the other, and I reject that premise outright.
I think she was saying that currently the management is focused on keeping employees happy and is self serving rather than serving the public at large. If our argument is they lack the resources to do their jobs properly, and we need to pay substantially more in taxes to make up for this deficit, which they do and we do, we also have to create a culture of accountability that is sorely lacking at the present.
Our Auditors office has been a joke for two administrations now. We know our party’s leadership on Beacon Hill not only tolerates patronage as business as usual but it actually openly expects and defends it in public. That has to stop. We are making a public commitment to a public good that the public uses. The first priority should be on serving the public and making sure every dollar goes to improving service. Safe and fair working conditions are part of that, endless bonuses and lack of oversight and accountability surely are not.
The state auditor is an elected position – but unfortunately the position is politicized.
The inspector general, on the other hand, is appointed by the Governor. I’m not exactly sure what the overlap in responsibilities is between the state auditor and the inspector general.
@stomv
This is not about fair wages. Wait a minute! We’re talking about overtime being abused.
It’s the 43% of overtime pay going to employees who took time off during the same week. It’s the fact that employees are allowed to work long overtime hours – which puts them at risk to be sick – instead of the MBTA hiring other people who could do the same job at a regular pay rate.
Let’s say for the sake of argument my shift is M-F, 6-3. Hour for lunch, 40 hours.
Let’s say I’m sick over the weekend, and stay home Monday. I use one of my vacation days, so my hours will still add up to 40.
Now Thursday comes along, and I don’t get to leave until 7pm. A 12 hour day, and I’ve got to scramble if the OT was involuntary. Same thing happens Friday. So it’s Friday, 7pm. I used 8 hours of sick pay for Monday, and worked 40 hours over an 83 hour span.
That’s not OT being abused. at least not in my opinion.
So the beef isn’t with employees clocking the OT — the beef is with MBTA management not hiring to correct staffing levels.
From an efficiency standpoint, a little bit of OT is good. How much depends on the relative one-time hiring costs and per-employee overhead like insurance. If an organization has lots of OT — the problem is being short staffed. Don’t blame the employees who are still there, putting in extra hours. Blame management for not hiring.
Mental block in the second paragraph. I meant sick days, not vacation days.
I think we are having an honest conversation about service.
I also take merrimackguy at his word, and I agree that the OT expense jump bears a look, at least.
But the Herald piece seems to imply widespread abuse. That might exist, but I think public workers deserve benefit of the doubt. All workers deserve benefit of the doubt. I need more proof.
If there is abuse, there are still other problems. If there is limited abuse, there are still other problems. If there is none … you get the idea.
Which is why it’s important we are having an audit to get objective information. It is probably not the calamity the Herald is making it out to be or the ‘nothing to see here’ story Petr is making it out to be, but something in between. And yeah, these abuses are a drop in the bucket. But even a dollar of taxpayer money wasted in this manner has an impact on the public perception and support for expanded government.
For far too long Massachusetts voters have had a choice between expanding government while tolerating the corruption and patronage that Beacon Hill thinks is business as usual or cutting government to take out the corruption and patronage.
There is obviously a better choice than that binary, which is to be fiscally sensible. Invest in expanding transit, but do so in a manner that is accountable, affordable, and improves service and expands ridership. I have yet to see anyone put such a comprehensive plan on the table in the legislture. They have all the votes in the world to override Baker vetoes. It’s a do nothing legislature confronting a do something Governor who will cut the crap out of this essential service if we don’t offer an alternative.
The MBTA clearly needs better management, especially better middle management. My immediate reaction is that stories like these describe what happens when ineffective or even incompetent middle management is in place. To the extent that the MBTA abused whatever discretion it had (and you can never tell with articles from the Herald), of course that abuse should stop.
It seems to me that the best way to solve issues like this is to replace incompetent and ineffective middle managers with those who are more competent and more effective. Various studies (including, I believe, the most recent analysis by Mr. Baker’s own team) have noted that MBTA middle-management compensation is significantly lower than similar systems.
We get the MBTA we pay for. If we pay substandard rates for middle managers, we get substandard middle managers — not very different from refusing to pay maintenance expenses and having equipment failures as a result.
If we start with a presumption that we need a functioning MBTA, then we need to pay for the middle management that such an organization requires.
Do you recall all the support here for Ms. Scott? Maybe if she actually was working at her office instead of “out of town” the whole time she was in Boston maybe some of these problems would have been mitigated.
Underpaid middle management is a convenient scapegoat. Heaven knows that workers would never take advantage of a flawed contract (who negotiates those anyway?)
See my promotion comment above.
Just for example, do a search on “MBTA” at the auditor’s website. Hm, fare box $ not accurately counted, 2012. Hm, they could have saved $11 million on better station planning from 2014. $11M! That’s cute. Meanwhile contractors looted the GLX for $1B over budget and people are tripling their salary gaming the system.
We’re supposed to have oversight from about 10 different places, and we’ve gotten jack.
The question of “who is minding the store” comes up frequently in this state.
If I’m not mistaken the GLX has only spent $380 million to date. I don’t know where the rest of the $740 million “if canceled” money goes. Regardless, feeding at the public trough is common for state vendors and I would be completely in support of additional oversight.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2015/12/09/transit-leaders-debate-how-pay-for-costly-green-line-extension/m2chP2llXygeexCP4ArFJN/story.html
Of course I remember the support for Ms. Scott here, I strongly supported her. She made specific recommendations, before and after her decision to leave. Have you read them? The D’Alessandro Report, from 2009, made specific recommendations. Have you read them?
The comments you’re making here jump from one scapegoat to another — Ms. Scott, “workers”, police, firefighters, whatever.
If we want somebody to “mind the store”, then we have to PAY somebody to mind the store, then actually pay attention to what the learn and say.
I agree with you that the situation is terrible. I agree with you that we need to somehow fix it. I think the question is how to accomplish that.
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/most-lirr-disability-pensions-terminated-in-doctor-fraud-restored-1.9646665
As it twists in several directions. The net/net is that it’s incredibly easy to go out on disability when you work for the LIRR.
Do you want me to post the link to the various issues with Boston Firefighters?
My point is that these systems create these practices. Cops calling in sick after working details. All firefighter sick time is “work related” and doesn’t count against their bank (which then accumulates until they retire). The public sector can’t afford it anymore, and it undermines the public’s belief that more money is needed.
Do you want fare increases or better work rules? Who benefits?
I think this is the link you were attempting above.
In my view, putting a stop to this disability mill is an example of what a state AG should do. I’m not holding my breath. I agree with you that these are terrible abuses. I agree that they should be stopped.
We need police. We need firefighters. We need public transportation.
I am not convinced that fare increases are needed. I am not convinced that work rules need to be changed.
I am convinced that state funding for maintenance and capital investment in the MBTA needs to be dramatically increased. I am convinced that significant improvements in middle and upper management at the MBTA needs to be made.
I am convinced that the Massachusetts and the entire New England region desperately needs a convenient, safe, and affordable public rail transportation system. Simply killing it is NOT an option.
Seems to me there is far more waste and abuse at the MBTA by itself, let alone other public agencies like the Probations department, on these kinds of perks than the entire EBT program which seems to be her bete noire.
First of all re Baker “fixing stuff:” such as what exactly? He’s really good at peddling stories like this to the press (which, once the spotlight shifts, usually turn out to be exaggerated). What has he fixed?
Second of all, the routine of the people in charge saying My gosh! This must be fixed! is getting really really old. The pols who are protecting us from the corruption are codependent with the corruption.
Baker, DeLeo and company—this is all on them. Period. And I notice the lack of the reform they will not lift a finger to obtain is not deterring them from seeking new revenue from T riders. More for less, as the system continues to deteriorate and routes and hours are cut.
Now here’s the thing. I agree the T is a dysfunctional inept starved beast. I agree people should not be expected to pour money down a rat hole. Heck, I agree that money alone is not going to fix things. But this dog and pony show does just not cut any ice with me.
It seems worse than it’s ever been!
http://www.universalhub.com/mbta
The MBTA collapsed last year. We have cut spending, shuffled the deck chairs, and published lots of hit-pieces. Nobody has proposed, never mind implemented, ANY fixes.
Of COURSE it’s worse than it’s ever been. It will continually get worse, and worse, and worse.
Public rail transportation in Massachusetts needs to be funded at a sustainable level. The Big Dig debt needs to be lifted from the MBTA, where it never belonged in the first place.
Until that happens, things will continue to spiral downhill.
Until we put end to this.
who have personal ethics and expect the same of their leaders.
.. The very fact of even just one person collecting overtime like it was candy, never mind so many persons, isn’t a problem of any loopholes, corruption, waste or abuse. It is a problem of a too small workforce chasing too much work. As one person pointed out in the previous thread regarding this topic, they could have hired two or more full time personnel for the outlay they’ve put into this one person.
Or, put another way, if there’s that much more work and there’s that much more overtime pay, there’s a need for a larger workforce.
Large amounts paid in overtime was very common.
Overtime seemed to be concentrated by location, inferring that either the information or the tolerance of overtime was localized.
It was possible that you didn’t need to to work 40 hours in a week to get overtime. How widespread this was is still TBD.
We already know that MBTA use (or abuse) of the FMLA is several times the rate at other state agencies (4 times DOT for example), which implies there’s a pattern of gaming the system.
You can believe what you want. An audit is underway and we’ll see what comes of it. Whether it’s the workers or the management doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it gets fixed prior to moving forward.
The point exactly. It seems like you, as the Herald also, picks among many options what should be considered common and what should be considered extra-ordinary. Overtime, under any circumstance and by any definition, is extra-ordinary. That’s why the pay is differentiated and dispensed in greater lumps.
If there wasn’t work to be done there wouldn’t be overtime paid. And if the total hours worked, never mind the rate or the path to those hours, is exorbitant then there is, as stated already, an inadequate workforce chasing a too-large workload. And if the workers are overworked they are going to have stress and medical issues at a greater frequency than other work forces… your apparent suggestion of waiting til after a 40 hour work week to call in sick is unrealistic. As well, under these circumstances ‘abuse’ of FMLA is going to occur as people are trying to squeeze time in their schedules to go to doctors or deal with other Family or Medical issues.
And how is that going to happen? Do you think that the MBTA will continue operations unabated and undiminished if, for example, all overtime is abolished with immediate affect? If there are too few people working too many hours now and you suddenly demand they work only so many hours… how and when is the rest of the work going to get done? The math, she is a bitch.
How is that, in any manner, “moving forward”?
The fix is to hire more people. The fix is to make the number of workers fit the amount of work.
they were excessive. Maybe there’s not enough workers. Maybe there’s abuse. In the absence of good controls, evidence of poor management, the way the numbers seem to line up, lack of oversight, and a history of other related problems, I’m inclined to think there’s significant abuse.
Maybe more workers are necessary. Maybe they’re not. Maybe some of the work could be done by non-MBTA workers. Maybe they need a different mix of workers. Of course overtime is frequently necessary in many organization both public and private, but I’ve never heard of overtime on this scale before.
Trust in the T and state government in general is at an all time low. Merrimack Guy isn’t inventing a problem that doesn’t exist, he has identified it. He may be wrong that fixing it won’t fix all of the problems of the T, but I find it hard to see how pretending it’s not a problem will help us create the political constituency needed to make the investments in equipment, personnel, and expansion that are vital to the Ts future.
… it is not a problem. It is a symptom of the problem. Fixing this in the wrong manner, will ONLY make the real problem many orders of magnitude worse.
Scapegoating overworked employees allows a peak of high-moral-dudgeon and some measure of gratification if and when we punish them…
… and then, when we realize that not only did it not solve the problem but made it much much worse, we will not get workers who are either able or motivated to competently do the work of ‘moving forward’ amongst the recently blacklisted cadre of MBTA employees. Congratulations. You fucked the people who do the job and when you come to realize what you’ve done and you actually, you know, need those people…, flowers and chocolate ain’t gonna work.
These are not “no show” jobs. Anybody who’s ever worked a high-overtime job, or multiple full time jobs knows the price they pay in harrried schedules, families stressed, friendships lost and health taxed. This is the situation we are in. There is too much work and not enough workers. Simple as that. You solve that problem by fixing the MBTA so that this situation is recognized for what it is and it will get fixed itself.