Hey, I'm workin' here! I'm workin' here!
Posted on 05/17/2019 3:37:32 PM PDT by conservative98
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed pay records for a recently retired Long Island Rail Road official who has emerged as the MTA reigning overtime king — as well as more than a dozen other workers at the LIRR and New York City Transit, according to a new report.
Thomas Caputo, who retired recently as the LIRR’s chief measurement operator, raked in $344,147 in overtime for 2018 by logging 3,864 extra hours — bringing his total take to $461,646, according to data from the Empire Center.
The watchdog group also found that one LIRR track worker, Marco Pazmino, more than quadrupled his base salary last year, taking home $256,177 by working an eye-popping 4,157 hours in OT alone.
Three people with direct knowledge of the probe told the New York Times on the condition of anonymity that the feds have subpoenaed Caputo’s and the others’ pay records.
Prosecutors in the public corruption unit of the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York are leading the inquiry, while the Queens District Attorney’s office has launched a separate probe along with the MTA’s inspector general, the Times reported.
Prosecutors also plan to review the antiquated timekeeping practices — handwritten records submitted by workers — used in some of the LIRR’s departments, the newspaper reported Friday.
Managers told the Times that state-of-the-art machines more capable of detecting fraud have been installed but not used amid fears of resistance by employees.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
how many hours did they work per week out of 168?
“To make that kind of overtime you don’t sleep, you don’t eat, and you never went home. People want answers,” he said. “How did that happen? Did it happen? Otherwise, what system did you have in place?”
https://nypost.com/2019/05/10/cuomo-says-massive-overtime-at-lirr-physically-impossible/
Pazmino — who has worked for the railroad since 1985 — made the extra moolah by putting in for 4,157 hours of overtime, along with 1,688 hours he worked at his regular $35-an-hour rate, the MTA revealed Monday.
That works out to an average of 22.4 hours a day from Monday to Friday — or 16 hours a day, 365 days in the year.
The MTA couldn’t say how many hours Pazmino had logged in a single shift — but noted weekend tours can last up to 55 hours during an outage.
Federal laws limit the number of consecutive hours train crews and dispatchers can work, but don’t apply to track maintenance workers, according to a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration.
If the guy worked "overtime" every single day of the year - that's 11.5 hours each and every day.
This is far beyond merely gaming a perverse system - this is outright fraud and criminality.
A couple of ways it can be figured. The article is unclear.
Typically it is a base week of five eight hour days at straight time (normal hourly rate).
Between eight and twelve hours are time and a half (you accrue 0.5 hours of premium time each hour)
After twelve hours is double time (you accrue 1 hour of premium time each hour)
Saturday is time and a half, Sunday and holidays are double time.
So you have hours worked plus the premium time; equals hours on the check. Or it can be simply hours worked.
And I be taking care of business (every day)
Taking care of business (every way)
I’ve been taking care of business (it’s all mine)
Taking care of business and working overtime, take care
Plenty of cameras running in that city to see where he was.
Credit card, phone records.
Or are government workers not allowed to be routinely spied on like the rest of us.
Billing like a lawyer.
Is he the guy? Makes Michael Moore look anorexic.
How much of those hours was CREDIT, and how much was actually worked?
For instance, one city worker I know gets 8 hours of weekend credit, + 8 hours of overnight credit, + overtime, just for showing up to change a light on a snowplow, on a weekend night. And this was three+ decades ago.
There was a similar thing about this in Indianapolis 20 years ago, with the bus service. Senior guys packing massive overtime hours to pad the retirement, which is based on the last two years salary.
In the end, the city could do nothing, it was all legit, and in the union contract.
The nearing retirement folks had seniority to bid whatever they wanted, including weekend “Reserve Lines”. If they did not get called in to cover a call off, they got paid anyway. Straight hourly, + weekend, + Sunday, + night pay.
Thanks for this explanation. So what you are saying is that there is a difference between the actual numbers of hours that these guys worked and the number of hours that they are credited with because of overtime rules?
YES!
Also, different jurisdictions have different agreements(contracts).
Example: Saturdays are time and a half in some and double time in others.
The agreements are usually public because of government funding. But can be difficult to find.
An old contract:
http://www.twulocal100.org/sites/twulocal100.org/files/contract_v5.pdf
Somewhere in here should(?) be the current contract?
http://www.twulocal100.org/contracts-taoamta-bus
Probably the only thing to come out of this probe is that fares will have to be raised significantly to cover “unexpected” costs.
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