Don't worry, he's getting paid overtime. Lots and lots of overtime.
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Comments
Weren't some of the
By anon
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 2:48pm
Weren't some of the maintenance guys working like 20 hour days during February? That can wrack up real fast.
Some possible reasons for OT:
By Pete Nice
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 2:14pm
-sometimes there is a minimum pay for an OT assignment, unless you extend your shift, for instance, if you get called into work by your boss but the job gets done in 1.5 hours, you get paid an agreed minimum, usually 4 hours. If at the end of your shift, you are forced to work an extra 1.5 hours, you would get paid 1.5 hours.
-taking vacation days and then working OT shifts in them. This can be frowned upon, and is usually not allowed in most Union contracts, but it is a practice that has been in use before. For employees who are allowed to buy these vacation days back at the end of your career, it so what offsets the overall cost of labor, but if you are creating OT yourself by taking the day off, it is the ultimate scam, even if you aren't the one doing the overtime.
-overnight shifts. I'd say 90% of union workers won't even sign up for overnight OT, but there are some who will take it every time they are called. This could be one of those guys.
-he could be a night worker himself, and if most of the OT is days or afternoons, he will have more of an opportunity to work that overtime.
- he could work in a group that simply has a lot of workers out injured/on maternity leave, sick, or just out. This would give him more opportunities to fill in OT slots on those jobs.
-he might just be the best at what he does, so the bosses call him and give him whatever he wants to solve the big problems.
Anyway, just a few of the reasons some people make more OT than others, although this is a lot of OT!
some people
By Scumquistador
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 2:35pm
know exactly how to work within the system/have the seniority to do this and have it be completely within the rules. good for them i suppose.
the job certainly doesnt sound too fun to me, since so many people seem to be willing to despise a person that works on a system they'd freely admit suffers from a lack of maintenance
How's that work when T tracks
By anon
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 2:23pm
How's that work when T tracks can only be maintained when they're out of service?
Forget late night T for the moment. 7 * 4 hours a night is only 28 hours a week. How's that turn into 80?
Or perhaps the T can do maintenance when service is running!
Or perhaps the T can do
By E.K.
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 9:06pm
Shock horror! I don't believe it!
Overtime abuse is hardly
By Christie-Baker 2016
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 2:23pm
Overtime abuse is hardly limited to the T, firefighters and police rake in tons of overtime, and many of them make more than 100,000. How many people who Baker is proposing to subsidize at GE will make more than 100,000? How many people who work on movie sets subsidized by us make more than 100,000?
We don't call it OT abuse when policemen put in more than 40
By Anonymous
Sun, 12/27/2015 - 6:15am
or earn more doing details than their BPD income.
The legislature did a study on corp. tax spending. This is where the big money goes. They won't even let the state auditor see it.
They should have to justify the value we receive from their corporate tax breaks.
Exempt Employee Sucka MCs
By issacg
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 4:08pm
the only thing that I feel confident in saying (until more data comes out) is that those of us who are salaried "exempt employees" (i.e., not overtime eligible), whether in the private OR public sector, are the real suckers here.
Yes, yes you are
By perruptor
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 5:29pm
Until the class of exempt workers decides to undergo the kind of struggle and pain that blue-collar workers did in the first half of the last century, they will continue to be exploited. The latest wrinkle is unpaid internships. Do you think that has no impact on your salary?
The proper response to some working person making a lot more money than you do is not to try and bring them down, it's to try and raise you and people like you up. The deck is very much stacked against you, of course -- particularly since you're all alone when facing management.
No, actually
By aging cynic
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 5:37pm
the suckers are those of us who try to get a state job without paying off someone or being related to a pol. I tried. For YEARS. Various job websites like "Commonwealth Employment Opportunities" are a joke.Only in MA can there be a budget-based "hiring freeze" right now at an agency while the SAME AGENCY posts for a "recruiter" to aid the beleaguered HR Dir. Obviously this is a bag job, with the job description written to fit the person already on the inside track. Nothing really changes in MA.
Not unique to the public sector
By perruptor
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 6:02pm
Private-sector employers routinely post job ads for positions they already have a favored candidate for. It's so their foreign-national guy can get a work visa, based on their "inability to find a qualified citizen" for the job. I once had a couple of interviews at a well-known research company, where the managers were all ready to hire me, until they were told the job was going to someone already anointed. The people I interviewed with were extremely embarrassed and apologetic.
Ugh. No overtime for me or
By maria c
Tue, 12/22/2015 - 6:25pm
Ugh. No overtime for me or pay increase but more money taken out of my check to pay for increased T pass soon. Life isn't fair.
So unionize.
By anon
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 7:38am
So unionize.
Then they'll paying dues out
By UAW track record
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 4:22pm
Then they'll paying dues out of every check to another layer of management which won't care if it bankrupts the host company and puts everyone out of work.
Presumably if that union were
By eherot
Thu, 12/24/2015 - 1:31am
Presumably if that union were bankrupting the host company, that would also mean that it was successfully extracting higher wages, which would seem to undermine the "union dues" argument, since they'd be making enough money to cancel out that cost.
And it's funny to me the idea that there can literally only be two modes: Bankrupt company and impoverished employees at a time when many US corporations are literally making record profits, the fruits of which almost exclusively accrue to the people who own them.
Fuzzy Math!
By anon
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 2:35pm
If the T was closed for two months how did they make this much overtime. Please don't tell us they needed to pay more OT when they were closed then when they are opened.
They weren't closed for two months
By adamg
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 4:37pm
It was a bad winter, but not that bad.
And a lot of the workers were on OT to try to clean the tracks. They didn't get as many snow days as school kids.
They called in sick when work was called for
By Markk02474
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 7:07pm
Adam, the Herald reported on T sick days and absences after the snowstorms. When the going got rough, T workers called out sick. That's why the national guard and outside workers were hired to clear the tracks.
Let the record show
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 12/23/2015 - 10:39pm
Markkkkkkkk is volunteering to provide child care for T workers when kids are home during blizzards.
He's also volunteering to cover shifts for sick workers.
Mighty nice of you to do that!
So now all T employees are single parents?
By Markk02474
Thu, 12/24/2015 - 4:04am
with no childcare options? So, do tell us how you know this.
If you want unreliable T service, by all means be very understanding of all sorts of employee absences. Hire twice as many workers as needed at $35+/hr and have half sitting around to substitute for the other half that might not come to work that day. Double your fare while at it too.
So, now all T employees called in sick?
By perruptor
Thu, 12/24/2015 - 6:14am
So, do tell us how you know this.
Absenteeism, including use of sick days, increases dramatically in every business when schools are shut because of snow. It's not because all those employees are single parents, either.
T workers are not different from people working for the phone company or Liberty Mutual or whatever. They have the benefit of union representation, but that does not make them bad people or otherwise reflect badly on them. There are just as many slackers, malingerers, and opportunists in the private sector, and your money pays for them, too, even if not as directly. If you feel that your situation is inferior to T workers, the burden is on you to improve it, not on them to degrade theirs.
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