Robert Kelly, president of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 308 representing motormen, said what Claypool calls “coffee time” is a 15-minute window to give motormen time to park sometimes a block away and get in the cab of a train before it’s scheduled to leave the station.That's right -- Chicago transit workers get paid to park their vehicles and get to work on time.
“If he wants to eliminate that, I’ve got no problem with that. But, that also means that train won’t go out at 8 a.m. It’s gonna mean huge service delays,” he said.
More of the crazy?
- Twenty-minute paid bathroom breaks for customer assistants with easy access to washrooms.
- [L]imits on discipline built into union contracts that make it difficult to punish no-shows. For example, an employee can only be discharged for excessive absenteeism after seven occurrences while consecutive absent days are considered one occurrence.
- Paying workers convicted of drunk driving to do nothing for 180 days while they appeal and attempt to get their driving privileges back.
- Starting the clock on emergency overtime when employees get the phone call at home instead of when they arrive at work.
- Paid holidays for birthdays and work anniversaries that guarantee bus drivers and motorman who chose to work on those days 2.5 times their normal hourly wage.
- Forcing the CTA to run a normal schedule of buses and trains, even on slow days like the Friday after Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Years, instead of “right-sizing” service to meet demand.
- A “spread premium” that pays operators — who pick their shifts based on seniority — time-and-a-half for working more than 10.5 hours a day. They receive the extra pay even if they deliberately pick runs at the beginning and end of a day and take a 5.5-hour break in between.
- A guaranteed, three hours’ pay for any work done outside a janitor’s normal hours, whether or not that janitor works more than eight hours in a given day.
2 comments:
Of course they don't. Or, more likely, they don't care. Because it's all about them and how much pay they can squeeze out, not about where the money comes from and for how long. The rest of us privately employed stiffs can just eat cake.
And we probably made the damned cake with our our own two hands, rather than waiting for someone to serve it up to us on a fancy plate, too.
Post a Comment