I'm shocked. Shocked!
Posted on 06/24/2015 5:47:23 AM PDT by Sean_Anthony
Forty hours in a single day?
Some excellent reporting here by Diana Stancy of The Daily Signal. I realize that when we start talking about dollars in reference to a federal agency, it’s hard to know what’s excessive. Amtrak pays $200 million in a single year just for overtime? Is that a lot? In the context of a $3.7 trillion federal budget?
Short answer: Yes. Amtrak’s entire personnel cost amounts to $1.2 billion, so you’re talking about one-sixth of that in overtime. But it’s when you really dig down into the reporting of hours that it becomes clear some of the employee claims that got Amtrak to that number amount to obvious fraud:
A variety of misleading documentation was visible in the audit. The Amtrak watchdog found employees often recorded more than 40 hours of work in a single day. Furthermore, employees reported 280 instances where they worked 31 days straight without any days off. One example the OIG cited was a coach cleaner, who reported working 108 days in a row.
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
It should not have required an investigation to “discover” this. Amtrak has the strongest unions in the country and its workers milk the company to the point of this type of outright fraud. It has been going on for decades. Even worse is the fact that you practically have to kill someone to get fired from an Amtrak union job. Show up drunk or high, punch your supervisor, loaf and sleep during work? Not a problem.
surprise!!
You can derail a train by running twice the limit into a curve and still have no repercussions.
It’s ALL about stealing more from taxpayers, expand overtime in last 3 years and your defined benefit pension provides a lifetime of income at 50% more than you would get otherwise.
Any wonder why these cities and towns are being bankrupted by unions?
I'm shocked. Shocked!
New rules. No more than 30 hours overtime per day per employee.
The article alludes to a possible answer. At the end of the year ALL federal agencies have to have their entire budget spent or it will or may get cut the next year. There is a rush to spend all the excess money on anything they can. I was a student worker in college and saw it happen at my job. That was over 40 years ago. Everyone in government is aware of this crap and no one has ever addressed the problem.
I think management is complicit in a lot of this.
I have a friend who is retired from the RR. She was in management and VERY pro Labor.... She got annual bonuses that were greater then MY annual earnings.
She supported/defended EVERYTHING the unions did.. and SHE was management.
Maybe people like HER were getting a cut TOO, because without management looking the OTHER WAY on some of this... how could it continue?
One would think that the payroll systems would have checks in them to catch this sort of thing. It’s pretty elementary programming to stop this.
Massive fraud in a Government entity???? You’re kidding! /s
Never understood why the fed gov is in the rail business anyway.
WOW! Government employees stealing. What next?
One would think that the payroll systems would have checks in them to catch this sort of thing. It’s pretty elementary programming to stop this. —
Sounds like a good problem for Common Core Math:
How many hours a day do you have to work at 1.5 times overtime, etc.
Solve by counting on your fingers.
At one time, when there were truly professional programmers, something called “controls” were inserted into programs. There were checks for reasonability. So if someone reported zero or more than 24 hours in one day, the data was rejected.
Doesn’t anyone notice this fraud? It seems that government projects are never audited and even when rampant fraud is revealed nothing happens.
Fire the offenders and their supervisors, seize their assets and exile them Enough pandering to criminals.
It’s really time the Feral Govt used double entry book-keeping. They might find the $6 Billion the State Dept “ mislaid”
Even happened in service back in VN days. Rule of the day: spend it or loose it”.
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