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Subscribe to RSSA train car repairman for the Long Island Rail Road earned nearly $203,000 last year - more than the New York transportation authority's chief operating officer - thanks to overtime bonuses that workers are able to receive under union rules, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority confirmed to msnbc.com.
Repairman Vincent Blackburn was one of 20 employees who received a six-figure overtime bonus in 2011, as first reported by The New York Post. Blackburn earned more than double his base pay of $66,539.12 in overtime, the paper said, in part due to an arcane labor agreement called "Rule 24."
Rule 24 has been phased out at all but one transit facility: the Long Island Rail Road's Richmond Hill, Queens, repair center, where Blackburn and seven of the 10 highest overtime earners work, reported The Post. Whether or not manpower is actually needed, Rule 24 calls for all vacant positions on certain shifts to be filled by the railroad, creating opportunities for huge overtime payments that increase with seniority.
Blackburn wasn't available for comment Tuesday morning. Aaron Donovan, MTA spokesman, confirmed to msnbc.com that the Post report was accurate, and said Rule 24 is one of a number of labor relations issues the MTA is hoping to address, but he said it's subject to the collective bargaining process with unions.
However, year-over-year overtime pay is declining, he said.
"Over time, expenses have gone down," Donovan told msnbc.com. "This was a focus on the top 10 [earners]. Certainly people do earn overtime, but the overall aggregate figure is down."
While the MTA hopes to reduce overtime across the board, the Long Island Rail Road has been one of the areas it's focused on the most. In 2010, LIRR overtime hours were reduced by 12.6 percent, or $13.4 million, compared to the prior year, Donovan said. They stayed at that level in 2011, and then, for the first four months of 2012, overtime hours decreased again by 5.9 percent compared to the same period in 2011, resulting in a savings of $1.8 million in overtime expenses, he said.
News of the large overtime packages comes amid a hike in fares for MTA riders in 2011. There are plans for more fare increases of about 7.5 percent in 2013 and again in 2015, the MTA chairman told NBC New York earlier this year.
While Rule 24 assisted in the bonuses at Richmond Hill's repair shop, employees of another quasi-public agency, the Port Authority, padded their base salaries with hefty overtime compensation, too. Sergeant Edwin Rivera, 43, was the biggest overtime earner out of the 44,000 Porth Authority employees for 2011, the Post found. A search on SeeThroughNY.net, a database of earnings for New York public employees, reveals Rivera pulled in $166,035 in addition to his base pay of $107,911. Rivera, of Staten Island, gets about $52 an hour to supervise police officers; that increases to $77.82 per hour for time-and-a-half overtime.
Rivera has already worked 888 hours of overtime in 2012 - about 40 hours per week - putting him on track to earn even more in 2012, an official told The Post. He has consistently been a top overtime earner in his 16 years at the Port Authority, partially because Port Authority has only 141 sergeants on the force, 20 fewer than needed, said The Post.
Port Authority: Curtailing overtime hours is a priority
Calls to Rivera went unanswered on Tuesday. A statement from Port Authority media relations said reducing overtime was a top priority.
"Since late last year, the agency has conducted a wide-ranging audit of operational spending, including police overtime, with the first quarter of 2012 realizing a 14 percent drop in the agency’s overall overtime hours," the statement, issued Tuesday afternoon to msnbc.com, read. "Reforms include increased documentation, reviews of overtime to improve compliance, and oversight by the agency’s future Chief Security Officer to curtail excessive police overtime."
Christopher Garrick, another repairman at the Long Island Rail Road's Richmond Hill, Queens, repair center, got more than $124,300 in overtime last year in addition to his base salary of $64,367.42. Garrick could not be reached by msnbc.com.
According to an MTA report from January 2011 that outlines cost-saving measures, the agency began a crackdown in 2009 on "unnecessary overtime that will save the MTA $70 million annually." Reducing administrative staff, consolidating MTA back office functions and freezing non-represented employees' wages were also listed.
Bloated overtime pay isn't the only problem the MTA is facing. Last week, the State Comptroller's Office revealed findings from a two-year audit of a unit of the MTA's Metro-North Railroad. Workers who were supposed to "monitor train conditions and crew performance were not on the job when they were scheduled to work and performed poorly when they were," the audit said.
In an examination of 300 rides, the comptroller's office discovered employees in Metro North's On-Board Services Unit had little to no supervision and "surfed the internet during work hours, including spending 6.5 hours on firearm sites and Google and 5 hours on various commercial sites such as Chuck E. Cheese. Reviews of cell phone usage found little communication between staff members and their supervisor but did find out-of-state calls and calls home."
The MTA has disbanded the unit as a result of the audit. More changes are likely to follow, Jennifer Freeman, communications director for the Office of the State Comptroller, told msnbc.com.
"The MTA is an entity that we have looked at quite extensively," Freeman said. "We are concerned about the questionable practices that we've identified. We're going to continue to probe employment at the MTA on an ongoing basis, and we expect there are a number of things we'll be looking at, given what we've identified through the course of our audits."
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Tell me again, how bad is the lot of the union worker.
How is this any different from the right wingers telling us we must honor bonuses for Wall Street thugs who made reckless bets..
Did anybody notice that these guys were earning twice their annual salary in OT? To me that raises red flags that something is fishy here. Either the city needs to hire additional workers or these guys could be hacks that are padding their wallets at the expense of the taxpayer.
@Kevinoffsite
It's not any different. The point is that both groups of people (union workers & wall street bankers) are screwing the general public and we should clamp down on these activities wherever we find them.
If you use paying undeserved bonuses to bankers as justification for paying undeserved bonuses to union workers, then what is stopping the other side from using paying undeserved bonuses to union workers as justification for paying undeserved bonuses to bankers?
We should be equally (or maybe proportionally to the $ amount) outraged in both cases.
The wall street thugs you speak of are paid with the money that the company makes. Its the board of Directors/Compensation committee of that company that decides there pay. It's not taxpayers money they are being compensated with. If you don't like it then don't buy their products or services.
Public sector Unions use union dues to support Democrats to get them elected to office. Then when its time for them to negotiate there contracts and rules who are they negotiating with? The very same people they supported with their money, campaign volunteers, etc. If the unions don't get what they want what happens to the unions support for that politician? This is the taxpayers money not private money we are talking about. Who is representing the taxpayer to make sure the taxpayer isn't getting shafted?
Do you see the difference now?"
How is this any different from the job situation of senators and representatives who get paid a lot of money for doing nothing and get pensions & benefits for the rest of their lives? And who enhance their pay with insider trading and corporate bribes?
The unions didn't cause the 2008 Financial Crisis, btw. Wall St. did.
@BlueBurner,
Senators are lazy & corrupt and Union workers didn't cause the 2008 financial crash so they deserve to screw the taxpayer as well? That's your argument?
ScubaSteve - Fair Point..
David Noah - Really? When we paid AIG 100 pennies on the dollar from Tax Payer money? That money went to fund insurance payouts for bad bets which in turn paid employees making bets! Doesn't sound very private to me..
BlueBurner,
Wall street didn't cause the 2008 financial crash. Only weak-minded people who fall prey to propaganda would point to such a small fraction of the economy as the cause of a crash that big. The cause of the financial crash was the American people.
Let me give you a simple example:
In 2005, a couple in California who just purchased a new home using one of those mortgages where the first year's monthly payments are low and they increase every year. A reporter doing a story on high-risk mortgages asked the couple, "What are you going to do next year when your monthly mortgage payment goes up $500 / month?"
You know what their response was? "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
People knew what they were signing. They only played ignorant and blamed the banks and wall street for their trickery when it didn't work out as they planned.
The American people do not understand a simple concept: Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
We've developed a culture of living paycheck to paycheck and buying luxury goods like smart phones and cigarettes and nights out eating or to the movies before we work on our credit card debt and putting money aside in case we get ill or have a disruption in our income.
You can believe all the progressive propaganda you want, but the longer you believe it, the longer you are contributing to the downfall of this country.
Fact is, to make that much overtime these guys are working 16 hours a day. 8 at straight time and 8 on overtime. I've seen it before, but I never wanted to work that much.
If there is that much work available, they need to hire more help.
This is called bad management !!!!
"Want to make $200,000? become a train repairman"
And then come back to MSNBC to read about why you are evil and we hate you because you make more money than us and we deserve more of your money.
Sincerely MSNBC/Liberals.
The problem is there is NOT that much work available. The "rule" the article mentions requires that every position on every shift be available if a worker wants it even if there is no work available on that shift. Much of the time they are sitting around doing nothing.
vglance - Certainly public greed is a big part of the over all issue, still to this day. But there where many components and blaming this on consumers alone would certainly make us useful idiots.
And you actually believe that? Do you know why my 401K plummeted? Because it bought some lousy investments that they were promised were gold standard--Mortgage Backed Securities. Financial institutions collapse due to their own "unregulated" business gambits, and the American people are to blame. Taxpayer monies to shore them up help them dole out multi-million dollar bonuses! And I suppose JP Morgan's recent $3+ billion loss, representative of the shenanigans that went on big time at these monster-banks, is also the fault of the American people.
People with jobs can pay their bills. People who are suddenly laid off in the millions are thrown into chaos. If you think an American family who carries $10,000 in debt and a mortgage caused this financial crisis, you must be smoking something. If you're not smoking something, then perhaps you should.
Nobody believes that. Nobody. You give me one anecdote about one family and that's representative and definitive of the 2008 Financial Crisis. Having worked as a realtor, I know how most of these people were shafted -- by realtors, lenders, lawyers. Banks did not have to give mortgages out to anyone who asked for one. No one was forcing them then; no one is forcing them now. Banks do what they want to do as they have proved. They saw an opportunity to make money big time in an unregulated market. Realtors, lawyers, appraisers, lenders--they make their money upfront. Big money. Fraudulent practices were rampant. Countrywide which actually paid realtors to throw customers their way, was one of the most flagrant criminal enterprises at work.
But go ahead. Make your case on the $500 monthly increase.
It's not great. And you are assuming that a single mismanagement issue means anything. The guy probably killed hismelf covering for two or three people because they wouldn't hire more people. And get real, $100K in the Republican world is chump change. It's astonishing that anyone that makes less than $250K would EVER vote Republican - it's like asking to be raped and then paying for it.
Unions = scum bags
Get rid of unions they are robbing us.
Do you honestly believe the union members want more workers hired so the Overtime pay drys up?
How are they going to pad there pensions?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/business/economy/21pension.html?pagewanted=all
"In Yonkers, more than 100 retired police officers and firefighters are collecting pensions greater than their pay when they were working. One of the youngest, Hugo Tassone, retired at 44 with a base pay of about $74,000 a year. His pension is now $101,333 a year.
It's what the system promised, said Mr. Tassone, now 47, adding that he did nothing wrong by adding lots of overtime to his base pay shortly before retiring. "I don't understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem," he said.
Despite a pension investigation by the New York attorney general, an audit concluding that some police officers in the city broke overtime rules to increase their payouts and the mayor's statements that future pensions should be based on regular pay, not overtime, these practices persist in Yonkers.
The city has even arranged for its police to put in overtime as flagmen on Consolidated Edison construction sites. Though a company is paying the bill, the city is actually reporting the work as city overtime to the New York State pension fund, padding future payouts — an arrangement at odds with the spirit of public employment, if not the law.
The Yonkers experience shows how errors, misunderstandings and wishful thinking are piling hidden new costs onto New York's public pension system every year, worsening the state's current fiscal crisis. And the problem is not just in New York. Public pension costs are ballooning everywhere, throwing budgets out of whack and raising the question of whether venerable state pension systems are viable. "
Tarc...
Wow! And to think you can vote. I guess everyone who votes republican makes over $250K. If that is the case, how was it possible to ever have a Republican POTUS.
I guess that would make you one of the Two Types of Democrats out there.
Once the politicians manage to send your job to China to help their 'job creator' sponsors, even the union guys are screwed.
WOW..that kind of money is equal to five or six people who need work...no wonder unemployment is high.
Long ago, I was a well educated (4 years of a solely dedicated to the profession vocational school) and a well trained and certified Journeyman Tool & Diemaker who could make or build literally anything (including railroad cars) out of literally any kind of metal and for anybody including working on the Apollo Programs and Secret projects for Bell Labs on weapon systems and was not even paid squat compared to these guys....the disparity is unconscionable and smacks of favoritism just because your a union member?
Were you at Basking Ridge NJ or Murray Hill? I worked for At&t for 10 years just after my Discharge In the White Plains facility.
public emploee's state & federal the disparity of pensions between the average person who put his/hers 35 yrs into (SS) is unconscionable. on average they won't get more than $1.000 a month i have a friend who is 85 yrs, put in their 20 yrs. retired at 55 as a electrical engineer at a salary of around & 50.000, because of (COLA) he is now recieving $84.000 from (PER) ca. he reentered the work force again & went to work for a city, put in his 20yrs, did it again, between the two he is receiving more than $200.000 a yr. this is just one person. i don't know how many people are drawing (CA.-PER), but just me personally have 17 friends that are drawing & not one of them is getting less then $6.000 mo. & only one had a college education. everyone of them did the overtime thing you mention just before they retired. as far as iv'e ever mostly seen if a public employee worked as hard as most private sector job's they wouldn't need overtime
Sorta' valid point, but simplistic at best.
So, the lending banks, that sold the mortgages to any number of guarantors to ameliorate that initial lenders potential losses (as opposed to being on the hook for the entire loan and property should the buyers default) was not much more likely to originate a loan for a suspect buyer? With the potential profits? And insurance against loss?
Nice try. In any other market, with the lender holding the loan, most of these BS loans would never have been approved. But, your defense of the banks and derision of the buyers is noted.
And that's just one of the unconsidered facts in your 'it's all the buyers fault' bilge.
JOS1 - Greetings again bro! I worked for Bronner Manufacturing on 286 Ridgedale Ave in East Hanover, NJ right outside Bell Labs in Whippany, NJ. Did a lot of military gyroscope stuff for them and other munitions for the Viet Nam war effort...did not go to Viet Nam myself (the Government wanted to keep me where iIwas) but I sure made a helluva lot of ammo for them......the stuff I like the most was making titanium electronic housings for the Apollo Command modules....I was only 22 years old at the time! I loved the trade, it was just that the pay sucked! Got lots of scar tissue on both hands and arms to show for it.
This is the problem with unions. They stick the employer with arcane out of date work rules that take an act of God to change. We don't mind people being paid a fair wage; it is actually good for the economy. The base pay of $66 grand seems like a fair wage for the work. 200 grand a year and much of it for being "on call" is insane. The same thing happens in Chicago. Politically connected CTA workers with seniority get paid overtime for being on call and at the station reading the funnies.
Of course liberals don't get it. Wall Street and the 1% are not hurt by the railroad paying some bloke 200 grand a year for laying around. Guess who pays this guy's salary? The working men, women and students that take the train everyday. They pay via higher fares. When they can't raise fares anymore, they cut service and the working man pays again.
Unions don't belong for teachers, clerks, city, county, state, and federal workers, bus drivers, or train repairmen. The public is their employer, not some mean corporation. Ban all public worker unions now!
Some could make a case for labor unions for meatpackers, coal miners and other dangerous jobs with a history of employer exploitation. But municipal workers are getting outsized pay and benefits while the working poor subsidize it all.
One would think liberals would sympathize with the people, but instead they sympathize with union thugs.
OK, the way I read it is that rule 24 states that if some jobs are not filled by the company hiring workers to fill them then they have to put other employees on overtime to cover the job. It is the transit authority who is at fault here. Fill the job and no problem with such high overtime costs. If the jobs are no longer needed then do away with them.
Municiple Unions across this country are pretty much ruining our economy at the pace of $1.4 trillion(MSNBC 6/15)! It is far time to restucture the rules that surround entitlements to union workers. I worked for a major corporation for thirty one years without a union! We were given a wage (performance) dividend each year based on sales and profit. Just think, If this railroad worker continues at this $200K pace for three years and he is close to retirement, we will be paying his pension base on that $200K! That's the rules too! Now, take 100 or 1000 individuals that did the same thing he did! Follow the math?
billy barty#1.23~~Friends do not confide in friends or acquaintances concerning their income. And you expect to convince us that you know all about the income, salaries, and/or pensions of 17 of your friends. Let me educate you, either your friends are lying to you or you are lying to us. Which is it?? Why did you not become a public servant, long ago, then you could be earning just as much as your 17 friends are?
Ouch: I guess everyone who votes republican makes over $250K. If that is the case, how was it possible to ever have a Republican POTUS.
......could be because, as the Onion reported in one issue, that 80% of the people in this country are just plain, mouth breathing stupid, how else explain W getting re-elected in 2004? I voted for him in 2000, but after just one year, I saw what a waste President Cheney and his talking puppet George were, so I supported McCain in the 2004 primary, and I hoped enough other GOP supporters would do the same. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. How many Middle Class workers will support Paul Ryan as he talks about taking their SS and Medicare away (he and his family don't need those retirement programs, they are rich, are you?).
@ BlueBurner,
Yes, because the companies your 401(k) plan invested within plummeted. 401(k) plans purchased very little MBS's. They were too risky for the type funds found within a 401(k) plan.
Furthermore, when banks and insurance companies merge you start to create more complex companies that has subsidaries in the insurance, investment (trading, creating, holding, and lending), and personal and commercial financial services.
Financial instiutions are amongst the most regulated industry in this country. The SEC regulates MBS because of the S in Mortgage Backed Securities.
JP Morgan Chase's $2 Billion dollar loss was out of the London office. If any Americans were on the team that decided to invest in those funds then yes, it woud be the fault of a few American people. For a company that generates, on average, $115 Billion USD a year, $2 Billion is a weekly paycheck. How many Americans blow their weekly paychecks on gambling, alcohol, drugs, prostitution, etc...Then, use their JP Morgan Chase credit card to purchase groceries, gas, and other necessities for their families.
After all, if people gamble in their free time, whether it be scratch tickets, buying a quick pick for the Powerball, betting on horses, dogs, professional sports or at the various games found in a casino...why wouldn't they be "gambling" at work also?
Why does a family carry $10,000 in debt? I would say that is a family financial crisis. Then add a mortgage on to that..oh my. I woud say that family will keep companies like JP Morgan Chase in business for the rest of their lives.
Let's examine the financial crisis. Mortgage Backed Securities and Sub-Prime Lending aren't new; they have both been around since 1977. Since then, a "perfect storm" was building then struck (2002-2007) led to the financial crisis of 2008. I won't get into all the parts but, there is plenty of blame, across all areas, to go around.
They didn't. One major piece of the financial crisis was the unregulated mortgage brokers. I worked for a financial institution during the time the "perfect storm" struck America (2002-2007). We turned people away that didn't qualify for home ownership. Two weeks later after being denied for a home loan, these same applicants were homeowners. How did they receive a loan for a $350,000 dollar home? Mortgage brokers weren't regulated. They created and lobbied for paperless mortgages, no documentation loans, your job is your credit, and when mortgage brokers and their workers got a taste of the money they were making....they "found" and "created" ways to keep their now extravagent lifestyles going. Greed set in and fraud ran rampant in these unregulated mortgage brokers. Don't believe it? Think I am full of crap? Do you remember the Ballpark at Arlington being named AmeriQuest Field? How about the MLB All-Star Game presented by AmeriQuest (2004 -2007). Where is AmeriQuest Mortgage Co. now? Where is Countrywide? Oh yes, they were both found guilty of committing mortgage fraud.
Now, mortgage brokers weren't the only culprits in the financial crisis. Appraisers, Title companies, investment banks, insurance companies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginne Mae, financial institutions, realtors, lawyers, these companies employees, and in some cases, customers have been convicted of mortgage fraud all across the country since 2006.
In my opinion, Financial Institutions were at fault for not doing their due diligence when accepting the bundles of mortgages the bought on the secondary market from the government and other institutions. This makes things difficult to determine whom exactly is the holder of due course of the mortgage.
Ha. Many mortgage brokers and their employees have been convicted of predatory lending. They were able to tell you anything you wanted to hear to get you to sign on the dotted line. The lawyers sitting there didn't say a word because they were being paid by the mortgage broker. The classic lines for predatory lending was, "Don't worry about the increase in mortgage payments over the years, you will get a pay raise from your employer." "Don't worry about the fixed payment in five years, you will be able to refinance into more affordable payment at that time." "Don't worry, in 30 days we will refinance the loan; let's get you into this house." And finally, "If you don't sign now you will lose the $10,000 you already gave me throughout the process to get you this far." If that isn't forcing someone to sign on the dotted line I don't know what is.
AIG bailout...hmmm. Anyone ever ask the question why it happened? I did. AIG was the largest insurer homeowner insurance issuers in the country. See, when you go to Arbella and purchase homeowners insurance they go to AIG and purchase insurance to cover the companies losses against mortgage default. If you read the 40 page mortgage document there should be a clause that if you don't make a payment on your mortgage for 12 consecutive months the mortgage insurance company will payoff the principal balance of your mortgage. We all know what happened, mortgagees defualted and a year later, AIG went bankrupt...overnight.
Many of the loans that caused the financial crisis were part of packages of mortgages created by mortgage lending companies (not banks) and sold to the federal government and financial instiutions directly. Then, banks asked their investment bank to create a MBS to offer investors. When the loans defaulted by the customer, the MBS's went sour. That led to companies, countries, and investors in the investment banks with bad investments. As a result, that led to layoffs. More people unable to pay creditors. More defualts on MBS's and more layoffs. Then credit crisis of 2010. More debt than ever before. World credit collapse. Debt restructing worldwide.
In the 1950's there was the Diners Club credit card. That is it. People had credit at the local mom and pop corner store. People paid in cash. If you couldn't afford it you didn't have it.
Here is a question for the masses. If you vote someone to work for you in Washington D.C. that has $50,000 in credit card debt and a mortgage, their children's college debt (co-signor) and a couple of auto loans...what do you think they will do in Washington D.C.? The same thing they knew in civilian life...rack up the debt.
Patsfan: JP Morgan Chase's $2 Billion dollar loss was out of the London office. If any Americans were on the team that decided to invest in those funds then yes, it woud be the fault of a few American people
..........The London office is still a part of the American corporation JP Morgan Chase Bank, and as such, their operation and transactions were the responsibility of corporate headquarters in NYC. Sorry, your argument is disingenuous. It's like telling me that Fidelity Investments, headquartered in Boston, is not responsibile for what their people in Atlanta do.
Leave it to a right wing extremist to paint everyone with the same broad brush. Really, what kind of work ethic did Ken Lay give us or the a$$holes on Wall St that collapsed a global economy?
VGLANCE: Long post with little thought behind it. Most of the loans which weren't paid back were because the people who had them didn't have the money. Amazing that the banks aren't responsible for making 500k loans to McDonalds workers. I guess you don't think the $40 million or so the bank CEO's make is enough to insure he has the education to realise lending no doc loans of half a million to minimum wage workers was bound to fail.
Amazing that the banks aren't responsible for making 500k loans to McDonalds workers. I guess you don't think the $40 million or so the bank CEO's make is enough to insure he has the education to realise lending no doc loans of half a million to minimum wage workers was bound to fail.
...Larry, of course they knew what they were doing, making money, they knew they could package up the bad mortgages and sell them off to unsuspecting and trusting investors, with help from S&P, Fitch and Moody's great credit ratings. It was pass the (bad) buck, and the American people paid the price. And no gun was put to their heads to make these loans, no specific laws passed requiring that they do so, no, just a relaxation of regulations and a turn of the head. As was aked by an aide in the HBO movie "Too Big To Fail": "Why wasn't this regulated?", the reply from Henry Paulsen was: "Because we were making too much money". Understand? By the way, it is an excellent movie, try to catch it if you can.
This is what these municipal employee unions are doing to our cities' budgets. They have idiotic rules that are designed to milk the system in order to pump up overtime and pad retirement incomes. Just look at how many municipal employees start working a ton of overtime the last three years before they retire. This is because their retirement pay is usually based on their last three years income. They do everything they can to boost their income in those last years in order to inflate their retirement pay out of all proportion to what they paid in during most of their career. This rule 24 that says that all positions on every shift must be filled is absurd. This means that if someone calls in sick they have to put someone on overtime to cover the slot, even if there is no where near enough work to keep them busy. They wind up sitting around drinking coffee for the entire shift and collecting time and a half for doing it. I have also worked with municipal employees and they are lazy. When I tried to get them to work a little quicker so that we could get things done they just continued to dawdle and take forever to do even the simplest task. Their comment as why should we work hard when e will just get paid overtime to finish the work later. They would intentionally slow down their pace of work on any critical repair because they knew that it would guarantee them the overtime to finish the job if it did not get completed during their regular shift. They basically said it did not pay to actually do any work on straight time when they could get paid to do it on overtime.
I can't get over the number of simpletons out here. Unions are a drop in the bucket compared to the damage Wall St bankers started 5 years, and we all have been paying the price ever since.
Post you PayPal ID and I'll send you 25 cents so you can buy a clue.
#1. When I said it wasn't Wall Street's fault, it's the American people. I figured it was clear that included EVERYONE. The problem with this form of blogging is that if you are specific enough to prevent anyone from taking your words out of context, your post is too long for anyone to read.
#2. Anyone who blames bankers, mortgage brokers or lawyers for convincing them into making a poor financial decision is, by default, admitting that those people know more about their finances than they do. It never hurts to get a second, third, fourth opinion, but when you are making the largest purchasing decision of your entire life, you better damn well know whether or not you can handle it by doing common sense variable analysis (What if I lose my job? What if there is rampant inflation? What if the wife gets pregnant? What if I or someone I am responsible for gets seriously ill? etc. etc. etc.).
#3. 90% of the American public (even high income earners) have less than 6 months of liquid capital in reserve in case there is a disruption in their income. Over 50% have less than 3 months.
No spin any of you can make will EVER effectively argue against the fact that we as a nation are all to blame solely because of #3. Well, except for maybe the 10% who are financially conservative enough to be prepared.
This entire culture is enjoying a standard of living that is built on promissory notes, and with how upside down we are on entitlement programs and deficit spending continues to prove that we are so far in denial, that frankly I see no chance. We've reached the point of no return.
Think of it another way. 200 years ago, average life expectancy was 35 years. We doubled it since then. In nature, it should have taken hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years, for a species to develop changes to its DNA that would double its life expectancy.
Thanks to modern medicine, we did it in 200 years. But at what cost? No one wants to admit that the exponential cost to artificially inflate life expectancy is completely unsustainable.
What politician is going to run a platform that demonstrates that in order to achieve sustainability in health care, we have to make such major cutbacks in care that life expectancy is going to drop perhaps 5-10 years? How are they going to get elected? Instead, we get promises to provide even greater benefits and care and we sweep the real numbers under the rug.
We're all lying to ourselves about the REAL math about pretty much everything: health care, military expenses, failed diplomacy and wasted/corrupted foreign aid programs, trade deficits, energy, economics, personal finances, and on and on and on.
All the people who bash Walmart only see the side of the equation where workers get low pay and poor benefits. They completely lose sight of the equation that millions of Americans save thousands of dollars a year by being able to get common products and produce cheaper.
Propaganda and reader bias completely blinds people from seeing ALL the math, and viewing things long-term instead of short term.
I would love for a progressive to explain why progressive states were the hardest hit by the recession and states with a conservative culture like Montana and Texas were far less affected.
And for those who lack political knowledge and get their education off of propaganda... when you hear the word 'conservative,' that doesn't mean radically pro-life, anti-women, back-to-the-stone-age, evangelical Christian, anti-gay, racist trailer park trash.
It means people who plan, who are cautious, who do their homework, who respect their neighbor, who believe in self-reliance. And they can be republican, democrat or independent. But they are definitely not progressive.
vglance - I agree, and you have some good points. But I'm not prepared to hand the tasseled-loafer Wall St. crowd a 'get out of jail free' card.
Despite the political posturing and finger-pointing since 2007, and even given that federal laws encouraged home ownership and finance policies to make that happen, I have yet to hear anyone identify a single law or regulation that required the alchemical creation of CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), SIVs, and other obscure derivatives for which there was no market whatsoever. Once created, those monsters needed to be valued and accounted for, so the question became: "mark to market, or mark to myth?"
We know now how Wall Street answered that question; we have the bailout receipts to prove it. [Talk about WMDs...]
Whatever Countrywide gained in commissions from borrowers who lived beyond their means was pocket change compared to the billions of dollars exchanged among traders betting on the fly ... and cooking the books en route.
I highly commend Kevin Phillip's book, "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism." The forces at work then, and now, are well-documented. Poor consumer choices are but a small fraction of the problem.
This is the backlash from Republicans insisting on cutting back on the number of public sector employees. The same thing is happening at the non union company I work for. We keep telling management they need to hire more people, they don't want to do that. Result, those of us that are here and trying to pick up the slack, are sick of it. When I get scheduled for overtime, I milk the clock, and slow way down, just to make sure it costs the company way more to try to make me do three peoples jobs, than it would, if they hired more people and gave me a full staff. Screw all you corporate a-holes. We may not have a damn union but we can still stick it to the man, if he tries to stick it to us. The more they try to overwork me, the less work per dollar they get. I just preempt anything they might say against me, by complaining first. "Jesus Christ boss, what are you trying to do? Kill me? You know I'm the hardest working son of a bitch in the company, but I'm to old to work this many hours. Get me some staff, for God's sake! And as long as you're here, can you watch the line, so I can go take a damned smoke break, before I strangle somebody. WTF? anyways. Here just catch these and hand them to him. I'll be back in 12 minutes", when you're a freaked out sweaty, disaster, because there is no way in hell you can do my job....so-called Boss. ( LOL, when I'm on overtime, my hourly is more than his salary.) Just put the paper-pushers to work whenever they come around, and they won't come around. Then we can do it however we want.
If NYC doesn't want to pay the repairmen overtime, all they have to do, is hire more repairmen.
Nobody is saying union workers are treated badly. What we are saying is that you non-union slugs are getting screwed! Instead of helping yourselves, you just want to tear everyone else down. Smooth move ex-lax.
Just goes to show how f'd up this country is... Bill's comment solicits positive resonses, but Kevins's gets collapsed. Scuba Steve is correct. Both are very, very wrong - the unions getting this through and the bankers pulling in bonuses for shady dealings and profiting off the demise of companies. GET IT - BOTH ARE WRONG! But people like the idea of the Gordon Gekko. THAT'S why this country is in the toilet and has no chance of getting better.
People and the choices they make cause their own problems - nothing else and no one else.
Are there predatory lenders out there - sure.
And you have Americans looking for them because they know they can't afford that new home or new car and they need to find a predatory lender that will give it to them anyway. Supply and demand, pretty simple.
People only play stupid when they are caught with their pants down and don't want to look in the mirror for the person to blame, they want to be able to place the blame elsewhere.
If you lose your job due to layoffs that you can't control, then that is beyond your control.
If you have nothing to fall back on and didn't prepare "for the worst", then that is YOUR fault.
Americans today are not like our parents and grandparents. They want instant gratification--they don't want to wait to work for it or save for it--they want it now and are willing to put themselves at great financial risk to get it now.
And that's the truth. We all have freedom of choice to make decisions about our lives, including those that are financial, and we have to suffer the consequences of those choices.
I've made more than my share of bad choices financially--and they are mine to own and I have no one to blame but myself.
Everyone needs to look in their own mirror when things go south, not point the finger at everyone else.
I'd like to know if all these big OT wage earners are filling their taxes and filing them properly? IRS? Anyone listening?
Well that's easy, you picked 2 states where the middle class earns way less that the "red" states. Most people are already serfs in Texas, there isn't much room to fall lower. There's a poor town near me that didn't notice the real estate crash, mostly because nobody was never buying any real estate there in the first place, it was low, it never went up, and it stayed low. Does that prove not going lower was such a great thing? Maybe in your limited mind.
You really need to get you head out of your a$$ listening to the Faux News pundits all the time indoctrinating you with their propaganda. There's a reason nobody evey hired beauty pageant winners before Faux News was invented, they're airheads. Which says a lot about the viewers.
Funny how you intentionally overlooked all the richer blue states that were hard hit, obviously part of your "Faux" conclusion.
Their base was 66K and they worked some heavy OT sometimes an extra 40 hours? I DON'T have a problem with this and most will tear this article up later complaining about the city and/or union. At least they worked for it not sitting on their butts like most of Wallstreet. Good for you, and great hard work is all I say.............
Really? Prove that he actually worked the 40 hours...in most cases you'll probably find that doesn't happen.
you haven't seen the work ethic of these people in unions - the hours before ot are deliberately slowed so ot becomes available then they really kick into slow gear.
I DO have a problem with this.
You should try reading the "Entire" article. Sounds like they really "Earned" that Pay.
"Workers who were supposed to "monitor train conditions and crew performance were not on the job when they were scheduled to work and performed poorly when they were," the audit said."
"In an examination of 300 rides, the comptroller's office discovered employees in Metro North's On-Board Services Unit had little to no supervision and "surfed the internet during work hours, including spending 6.5 hours on firearm sites and Google and 5 hours on various commercial sites such as Chuck E. Cheese. Reviews of cell phone usage found little communication between staff members and their supervisor but did find out-of-state calls and calls home.""
You must not of read the article then seven...
They abused an old union rule to get said overtime
Im not a betting man.. but I would be willing to bet that at least half of that time falls in the bolded section of Rule 24.
David Noah
Please don't confuse the masses with what was actually in the article.
Comments written from Tuesday morning J-Off "workers" who are playing on Newsvine while THEY are supposed to be working!! Too funny when the kettle calls the pot black, LOL.....You know most of you are busted but will never admit it.
The end of the article said they were on phone calls and surfing the net. I don't think that has anything to do with repairing the trains. The State needs to do an investigation of the repair men, if nothing else hire some more people so as to not pay out as much OT. I would say the Mayor's office could do the investigation, but he is to busy making sure no one can buy a big gulp of soda. Sarcasm...Food for thought.
So raise your hand if curiosity got the best of you and you went to Chuck E Cheese's website.
*raises hand*
Still trying to figure out why people would spend so much time on that site...
Yeah I'm not complaining about people being well paid to fix the subway to be honest. It's a vital job for NYC as anyone who has ever had to be delayed because of a train quickly finds out.
So, can I assume that you are one of the said "J-Off workers"? Shouldn't you be working? Any response to this is meaningless as it would expose your major fail in generalizing EVERYONE that posts on newsvine!
NC north carolina hillman, yes, I am doing it right now and getting paid well. I admit it, can you? Do you watch the Office? It is just like that here, too much fun!! Do you have any intelligent comment for the artical at hand? No? then be gone Goober!!
I
I'm with KamKam. These guys are paid to maintain the trains and keep them safe. I wouldn't want to hire cheap help. That would be like hiring cheap labor for airplane maintenance. Is it worth a buck saved? I worked on the railroad and a train doesn't care if it kills a hundred people!
I did the original viral video of the Metro North engineer reading the paper (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCkE0Br9k4g
), and I have been taking photos of the cover up (http://www.flickr.com/photos/80446410@N05/ )(the photos were while I was being followed, video-taped and threatened that my photos were not authorized and they could take my phone if they saw me take a picture. So the photos are not very good). I also talked with a Metro North spokesperson who does not agree that NY trains are at any special risk of terror. This whole fiasco is an illustration of people setting safety policies based on protecting the image, and not the reality, of safety. Terrorists are stubborn and don't change methods, regions or targets. They like NY, IEDs and the rails. We have to get ready, especially now with our troops coming home. And even though an engineer might not be able to save himself or all his train, he can save the next one and that is still saving 800 lives.
I contend that the entire problem is Metro North policies including the deliberate failure to follow up on reports of safety violations AS A MATTER OF POLICY, poor safety monitoring (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-15/metro-north-monitors-watched-websites-not-trains-audit-finds.html), nepotism (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/official-confirms-metro-north-big-shots-relatives-payroll-article-1.1097370?localLinksEnabled=false), and allowing employees to cover up windows (http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/metro-north-engineer-windows-covered--158326065.html).
Please note that I experienced a pattern of discouraging, ignoring and retaliating against my attempts to report minor health and safety violations, before I got motivated to get up and observe the engineer while he was driving, and what I recorded was the first time I ever looked into an engineer's cabin. I reported the engineer to the conductor who was standing 3 feet from the behavior of reading the paper while driving. Of course, nothing was done about it and the next day he showed up for work thinking nothing is wrong.
The rule wasn't abused, the project managers weren't doing their jobs by manning the jobs w/o overtime involved.
Sure these guys are going to make the money when its available, They don't sign their own checks, Managers approve the time and that's where the problem lies.
You cant blame a worker, union or otherwise for accepting whatever extra work is thrown at them.
You can if you're a right wing zealot.
Again I say, bite me, you corporate toadies! I'm not even in any danged union. If you don't want me to get surly and hard to get along with, and milk the clock, when I have to work overtime, then hire some more people, so I don't have to work overtime. "Job creators" my Black Irish Ass! Cheap, Tax Break Hoarding, Moneygrubbers, more like.
So typical of the abuses seen with union contracts. Beyond reasonable compensation - except if you look at life through the prism of union rules. Understanding this type of excessive payout is throughout the entire public employee system it will soon collapse under its own weight.
Then you will agree that ALL wall street compensation is beyond reasonable, right?
Honeyboy....public unions steal public money, Wall St. steals private money....why are you too dense to understand the difference?....
Pointing to isolated cases and trying to paint all unions with the same brush is like saying all conservatives support CEO's raking in 75% of a corporations profit. For every case like this where union employees are receiving absurd pay there's 10 thousand who receive modest pay and benefits. Blame the politicians on both sides of the isle who approved excessive pay packages. I doubt even conservatives think their politicians are above giving away the store to buy a vote.
Oh please. This is not a "union" issue. If you want to control overtime, hire enough employees to get the job done in an 8 hour day.
Did you read the articles discussion of Rule 24 or are you just spewing typical union points?
Yes, I read the whole article. I specifically read "Rule 24 has been phased out at all but one Metropolitan Transit Authority facility." Sounds like it needs to be phased out there, as it was everywhere else. People like you like to make generalizations about every union worker based on an obscure case such as this. There are bad union AND non union workers...give it a rest.
Annie,
I'm not sure how you can read the whole article and not agree that this is a union issue. Rule 24 is a union rule. These are union workers abusing that rule.
And the difference between bad union workers and bad non-union workers is that bad non-union workers get fired.
I'll actually believe these comments if you actually live in NY. The LIRR and MTA have been a big drain on State money for 30 years. MSNBC didn't run the scandal from 2 months ago when LIRR workers were on disability and working off the books at other jobs or playing softball. Monthly ticket prices continue rise while service continues to fall. I don't know who other public service unions across the country are but in NYC, the MTA and LIRR are the poster children for what is wrong with unions. The LIRR could have cut cost by cutting conductors by modeling after the BART in the Bay Area but the union blocked it.
So if you haven't lived in the NY metro area, you have no idea and please stop making ignorant remarks.
C'mon dense pretenders, don't act like you can't figure out that she meant that overtime is the problem, not unions. The "job creators" aren't creating jobs. They're just making the remaining jobs, more of a job. I just double checked my schedule, a few hours ago and found that I was down for another overtime week. I'm with Annie. Hire some more people! And not just illegal aliens. Republican swine-in-charge.
Now you complain about overtime? Next you'll be blaming lack of hiring on some poor Democrat, and probably not even taking a breath, between the two. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Overtime is Overtime.. This is time not spent at home with their family or doing wonderful things others do when they're off.. If the railroad would hire those extra people needed to do the job then these folks wouldn't have to work the overtime..and to those who are saying they aren't working..If someone has to be on the job then it's working!
They need to hire more people or shut up about how much money any union worker makes in overtime!! Our police salaries in NJ are smeared in the newspaper of how much money we make in OT every year & they leave out that 90% of it is "FORCED" because they wont hire more people because if they do they'll look bad in the paper for spending that money on salaries of "needed Officers" it's pathetic that you get ripped apart for money you are being taken from your families & your life & forced to make. Yes maybe that sounds glorious the burden of being forced to make money to those not making any or that are layed off but when you work 3-4 16 hour days in a row tell me how great it is that your life consists of work & sleep & do it again. Money doesn't mean much when your sick, run, down or have numerous other medical conditions caused by this stress on the body... Don't blame the workers making the overtime blame the Big Wigg's in charge that aren't hiring enough workers so there will be "No Overtime" & more Jobs!!
You clearly didn't read the article. These union workers were abusing an archaic rule that stated that positions had to be filled whether or not there was work to be done. From the article:
Quit confusing them...for some reason there are some who think it makes sense to pay an adult to sit around doing nothing...that's a huge part of what is wrong anymore...over half of adults are finding a way to get by without actually working...
The point is that not all union employees are abusing Rule 24 nor are they working overtime for the money. They are being forced due to too few employees. Let's not demonize all government or union employees because of a few.
Even though few liberlals posting here support these pay policies, most explain that obviously these policies are rare and had been eliminated in most departments. Conservatives never miss a beat to treat 1 case of abuse and act like all liberals approve. They need to grow up, I'm sure most are too old to think anyones fooled by their rants. It's a shame they aren't so willing to hold their republican leaders to such a high standard.
It's not just union workers. And it's not the unions that don't hire enough workers so we don't have to work overtime. It's the "job creators" who won't hire enough workers so we don't have to work overtime. Unions don't do the hiring! Companies do the hiring, or in the U.S. case, don't do the hiring. The same companies that banked an extra 4 trillion dollars in profits in the last three years.
Are you all nuts? Or do you just not have jobs where you have to deal with reality? An ergonomic chair, behind a desk maybe?
Yes, I'm working non union overtime and yes, I'm taking it out on innocent fellow viners. Thank you for the opportunity to vent. I really do feel much better now. ;)
Typical public sector union waste. It's the taxpayers who get screwed. An yes, most of the money from mass transit comes from subsidies from the government. I guess Governor Walker had it right in Wisconsin.
It's sad right wingers can't admit stories such as this are the exception and not the rule. Of course using an example of absurd pay to bash the millions of teachers, firefighters, police and other public sector workers who make 30-50k a year and 800 a month pension after 30 years. Sorry the truth doesn't fit your agenda.
So the morale here is, if you have a union in your state you can leverage the hell out of it to make a fortune. Sorry, too many downsides for my tastes, I'd rather make my living honestly.
No, you'd rather spout mindless nonsense.
No wonder the Tolls in NYC area keep going up. A lot of the work done can be easily reduced if more technology was allowed. But that would mean no more o/t padding, pension padding and generous sick time payouts. What a scam, get rid of Unions, see how quickly things turn around.
You are a retard who do you think repairs the technology.
You need to stop spewing forth all the propaganda you heard on "Faux News."
Probably makes more than a brain surgeon ! But then again, I' ll bet those trains are ALWAYS on time and there is NEVER a problem with them, so he is worth the money.........
Gov Walker would get killed In New York if he was Gov. and tried to due away with union's.
Hmmm, now there's a thought? Can we transfer him?
Well Tony, Cuomo is trying to reign in the unions. And more governors are going to try to do what Walker did. His controller, DiNapoli has been auditing the MTA and the World Trade Project intensively. Unions are the ones who asked for the Toll hike on the bridges so they can complete the project which is completely over budget. But what can you expect from union construction projects? See Big Dig in Boston.
Right, non union jobs never go over budget. Any more "Faux" truths?
There is a gaping hole in National Security at exactly the most likely point for a terror strike. It requires connecting the dots.
I did the original viral video of the Metro North engineer reading the paper (
), and I have been taking photos of the cover up ( )(the photos were while I was being followed, video-taped and threatened that my photos were not authorized and they could take my phone if they saw me take a picture. So the photos are not very good). I also talked with a Metro North spokesperson who does not agree that NY trains are at any special risk of terror. This whole fiasco is an illustration of people setting safety policies based on protecting the image, and not the reality, of safety. Terrorists are stubborn and don't change methods, regions or targets. They like NY, IEDs and the rails. We have to get ready, especially now with our troops coming home. And even though an engineer might not be able to save himself or all his train, he can save the next one and that is still saving 800 lives.
I contend that the entire problem is Metro North policies including the deliberate failure to follow up on reports of safety violations AS A MATTER OF POLICY, poor safety monitoring (), nepotism (), and allowing employees to cover up windows ().
Please note that I experienced a pattern of discouraging, ignoring and retaliating against my attempts to report minor health and safety violations, before I got motivated to get up and observe the engineer while he was driving, and what I recorded was the first time I ever looked into an engineer's cabin. I reported the engineer to the conductor who was standing 3 feet from the behavior of reading the paper while driving. Of course, nothing was done about it and the next day he showed up for work thinking nothing is wrong.
as far as i'm conserned if you are hired to do a job, union or not be it scrubbing floors or flying a rocket ship, unless it say's reading the news papers or anything else not stated in job discription, aspecially if it is a problem with safety, their should be a reprimand at least, & possible transfer, repeat your gone, no rehire.
In this case, further punishment would not help solve the problem. The person is not the problem. The corrupt management is the problem that I needed to document. The guy clearly feels he will never be monitored, because there is no focus on the importance of keeping an eye out for potential attempts at derailments. Everybody needs to be observed and needs constructive feedback. He clearly did not get that, and the reports of corruption that surfaced after I took the video further prove my point. But the public and the media are focusing on the wrong priority. This is not a financial fraud crisis, this is a terror vulnerability crisis. The lives that may be lost if we don't patch this hole in National Security far outweigh the dollars wasted per passenger. We have to fix safety first and then worry about politics next. We have to pull together or we will be too weak to counter the threat.
And how many engineers weren't reading the paper? Waiting for a count so we can calculate a percentage.
Almost every week somebody wins the lottery, but what are your odds?
Useless anecdotal evidence.
"This gets us back to the union principle that the company must pay us what we are entitled to!"
Name the author!
Jello heads!
Any questions why government control of businesses is wrong? Make the Transportation Authority a private business. Get city Hall out of businesses!
The New York / New Jersey Port Authority is so corrupt that the Mafia look like Sunday School teachers. Contracts have money added on top of the bids, to provide pay offs to the chosen disciples of the Authority, they are a den of theives!
If they dont like paying overtime hire more people! Union rules require the lowest seniorty people to be force assigned to the vacant positions. As for the the cops hire more cops so you can promote the ones as you need!
a good train repairman SHOULD earn at least as much as an investment banker who loses money for his/her clients!
Could be that he really sucks considering the amount of overtime he is spending repairing things.
This board deletes my 6 links, so if you want to see them, you need to search for a string of my text on the web. Dealbreaker dot com has the links, for one.
These jobs are not AVAILABLE to you or me, or our kids. They are ONLY available to union, government, mafia nepotism! and $200k is chump change for what some others make. Union Bus. AGENTs for unions like the operating engineers union( they operate equipment) get paid 24/7 where there members work overtime on projects like the new world trade center, they make $1,000,000 a year and call it pay! EARNED income,
That's great, finally a few public sector employees that'll be able to take advantage of Romneys desire to lower the top tax rate from 35% to 25% costing 5 trillion over 10 years and paying for it by eliminating the home mortgage deduction and employer health care exemption. Good to hear a few public sector employees will benefit from Romneys plans.
Good for them..Hard work rewarded!
THEY DON'T work, they suck on the work of others, they are greedy and corrupt, like all unons.
The money is not important. The real issue is how the corruption is making us vulnerable to a terror attack. With hundreds of lives at stake, we have to fix the terror issue first. All these symptoms of corruption prove radical mismanagement, but the first item on the clean-up agenda has to be to fix safety.
OK retardicans you don't like this? Then tell the ceos to stop stealing from corporations which by the way are publicly owned with their outrageous salaries and perks. Then you might have a case against unions. Until then f-you and your rotten pathetic dogma.
Dumbest post in this thread. Congrats!
Nah, that'd be yours.
If you replace the "a" and the "c" in your screen name, with "u" and "d", you'd be Turd. Funny!
Another shining example of W's no child left behind act. Nice to see the child up front, isn't it? Tell us how many hours you spent figuring that out. Did you do it alone or did some lobbyist have to lay it all out for you?
Yeah, it would.
If you replaced the NO with YES what would you have?
You would have someobody following the other corporatist. Not an improvement.
Pot meet kettle, kettle this is pot.
Union Job = 1 worker, 1 immediate supervisor, 1 supervisor overseeing the immediate supervisor, 1 general supervisor overseeing the other supervisors, 1 directing supervisor overseeing the whole "gang", and 1 shop steward there to make sure they are all union workers.
Union motto = why get done during regular time, what you can not get done during overtime.
Union motto 2 = there's always Saturdays and Sundays, double-time for us!
Republican Rule #1 - Fleece the taxpayer at all times to transer as much money to the weathy as humanly possible no matter the cost.
Corporate Rule #1 - Buy all politicians to help in fleecing the public regardless of the cost.
Those are democrat rules and mantras. I hope I don't have to keep correcting you.
You're both idiots, democrats and republicans are masks for corporatists. The only difference between the 2 is which corporations are calling the shots.
And despite the obvious the 2 clowns above this post continue to behave like cult followers.
Bahhhh you dumb bastards, bahhhhhh.
Yet another example of how public sector unions are fleecing taxpayers and damaging the economy.
Of course, that's a crock - we've seen how the economy tanks as unions are crippled. In this case, well-paid (likely Republican) bosses failed to do their jobs. No doubt that the train guy killed himself over the last year covering, but the bosses who are supposed to keep the rules even across the districts and hire appropriate people in a timely manner FAILED. It's not an union issue, but a management failure.
Tarc: Can you at least read the article before you spout union propaganda?
"employees in Metro North's On-Board Services Unit had little to no supervision and "surfed the internet during work hours, including spending 6.5 hours on firearm sites and Google and 5 hours on various commercial sites such as Chuck E. Cheese. Reviews of cell phone usage found little communication between staff members and their supervisor but did find out-of-state calls and calls home.""
MSNBC threw that last bit about Metro North on the end to deceive everyone into thinking this was the overtime "hogs". Metro North's audit was just a regular audit, not for overtime abuses. First off, article 24 is in a contract that was agreed to by the union and the MTA. So, the MTA agreed to pay for the staffing that article 24 of the contract said was necessary. So this is not a shock to the MTA, nor the city auditors, nor Mayor Bloomberg if they read the contract that they signed and agreed to. The union workers were only going by the contract that they had with the MTA, city, etc. So, don't get your panties in a wad when someone does what the city agreed to in a contract. Do I think it seems absurd; sure I do, but I don't have all the facts yet, maybe they had that clause in the contract because they have a staffing problem at that particular location, and that was the only way to get people to work there. I just don't know, and neither do you, but getting mad at the workers is not the answer. We need to get "mad" at the people who agree to these contracts with these arcane clauses still in them, or at least send them back to school to learn to read. But for some it's easier to get mad at the union workers for doing just what the contract says instead of "policing" the politicians who've agreed to this. I say look in the mirror and find the people at fault, since we're the ones who are footing the bill. It's high time we all got involved and put an end to the politicians spending our money like it was water and a never ending stream at that. I'm sorry, but there's a drought and the stream is almost dry here!!!
The difference between you and the right wingers is you admit the pay packages are absurd. You think they'll ever admit anything a republican does is wrong.
Remember when dumb-ass Bush said God is on our side, instead of saying we're on God's side? Typical pub arrogance.
So, in short, a guy who works hard and does a good job got lucky because his bosses failed to do their jobs and produce consistent rules and monitor salaries properly. Not his fault. Perhaps the people that make salaries far higher need to held responsible for doing their jobs. Like most upper management, it's likely they do little and accomplish less for their immense salaries.