Posted on 09/11/2018 8:21:11 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Lisa Lebowitz was sitting in a delayed NJ Transit train departing Hoboken one recent Monday evening when she overheard an exasperated passenger complain about the frequency of last-minute cancellations.
“Don’t worry,” Ms. Lebowitz recalled a crew member telling the passenger. “You should be good tomorrow because we take off Mondays and Fridays.”
NJ Transit has been forced to cancel hundreds of trains this summer resulting from shortages of railcars, locomotives and workers.
But it has also had to cancel trains because of last-minute calls from train operators saying they are sick or need time off for family or medical reasons, according to data provided by NJ Transit.
The calls, known as unplanned absences, come most frequently over the weekend. But they are also common on Fridays and Mondays, when they impact service more extensively because the rail system runs at capacity.
When conductors or ticket collectors take an unplanned absence, NJ Transit can still run trains, albeit with smaller crews. But when engineers, who drive the trains, call out, the agency must cancel services.
The situation is compounded during summer months, when not only are many workers on vacation but, according to agency data, unplanned absences are also at their highest.
State transportation officials say NJ Transit currently employs just under 350 engineers, about 50 short of what it needs to run a reliable service.
According to the agency’s data, between July 1 and Aug. 26 this year, on average, 23 engineers took an unplanned absence on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. That average rose to 31 engineers taking an unplanned absence on Fridays and Mondays. The rate peaked on Saturdays when, on average, 33 engineers took unplanned absences.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Yep, I’ve let go a few over the years that frequently called in sick on Fridays or Mondays.
Union jobs.
As Dilbert once pointed out: it’s a total outrage that 40% of sick-leave occurs on Monday and Fridays ...
Where I came from if you called out sick b4 a paid holiday you didnt get paid for the holiday unless you had a doctors certificate.
I’ll have to look for it, but I saw a report that for NY Government workers, the most sick-days were taken on the Monday after a Jets victory (downstate) and a Bills victory (for Upstate)
At a place I worked in the 80s it was common knowledge that a sick Monday or Friday required a doctors note on return.....even then, too many and you knew you were on thin ice. And if you worked on the weekend and called in Monday, LOOK OUT.
People call in sick more on Mondays or Fridays!!!
In other news... the sky is blue.
You solve this by combining PTO and sick into 1 bucket. Every time I see separate buckets of days, losers pull this stunt.
“Union jobs”
There was a time and place for them....IMO that time and place has passed.
But it has also had to cancel trains because of last-minute calls from train operators saying they are sick or need time off for family or medical reasons, according to data provided by NJ Transit.
Ball's in your court, public transit advocates.
And yet, Maryland, and maybe other states, are mandating that some companies provide sick leave, instead of simply having somebody to take personal leave when sick.
that’s great but it depends on type of job. I sure don’t want my doctor or health care techs, office staff coming in semi sick, toughing it out and spreading germs.
Nor do I want deli workers/food preppers blowing their nose or sneezing etc and not constantly washing their hands or new gloves.
I do very much dislike those who abuse optional paid or taking unpaid days off and leave customers and co-workers to deal.
*crickets*
Public union goons know they can never be fired
“You solve this by combining PTO and sick into 1 bucket. Every time I see separate buckets of days, losers pull this stunt.”
Here in CA, the firefighters have the best rip off game going. They have a routine that “you call in sick, and I work your shift for OT. Then you return the favor.” The FFs can then be off waterskiing or running their side businesses they have a virtual lock on the business of plowing people’s weeds, which is mandated by the Fire District), and the taxpayers get to pay for it. Here in Contra Costa County, the ONLY county employees who make more money than the FFs are the doctors in the county hospital and it’s a neat trick to see if you can pronounce any of their names. It helps if you are fluent in Swahili, Farsi, or Hindi. Average pay for FFs here is a little over $100k, but with the OT scam, they mostly come in at about $250k, and then they can retire at 50 with full pension and other Cadillac benes.
Our son and his family live in NJ; we fly into Newark and take the train to P’ton. One time the train stopped for 1/2 hour midway, for no apparent reason. Sometimes several trains don’t come, then a third one comes, which is now the Express that was supposed to leave 1/2 hour earlier. People get on thinking it is the stops-everywhere one, only to get a fast ride south.
Oh, and the trains are never really marked which one is which, so nobody really ever knows.
Oh and they are filthy.
Anyone who waxes eloquent to me about public transit will get an earful.
I worked in a big city (East Coast) ER for years.The city's cops were always coming to us for the most trivial injuries and always asked for Doctor ThreeDaysOff.Our unofficial (actually *secret*) policy was to always write a note for them because we suspected that when we needed them (we were always calling them to defuse potentially dangerous situations) they might take their time if we didn't "help them out".
OTOH,the city's firemen almost never came to us and when they did they almost always had a potentially serious problem (smoke inhalation was often the problem).
You mistake me somewhat in referring to me as a "public transit advocate." I am, first and foremost, an advocate of people living closer to their jobs and, correlatively, of building cities around multi-purpose neighborhoods that make this easier for more people. I get drawn into most of these discussions when I oppose road "improvements" that smash through close-in, livable neighborhoods to shave a few minutes off the commutes of people who choose to live 50 miles away from their jobs. If you want to live way, way out in the farthest reaches of suburbia, that's your prerogative. But don't demand that the state highway department build you a personal freeway, wrecking other people's neighborhoods in the process.
Here in DC, there is no place to put a new arterial road inside the beltway, and darned few places in the outer ring counties as well. The commuter-pandering "improvements" that cause a ruckus tend to involve the creation of new lanes on existing roads, at the price of taking sidewalks, shoulders, tree plats, front yards, on-street parking along neighborhood main street strips, etc. Over the years, the highway folks have also tried to increase speeds by turning what were formerly ordinary city streets into limited access expressways with fewer stoplights and crossings. All of these things make formerly civilized neighborhoods unwalkable and unbikeable, and they degrade the quality of life by adding noise, congestion and dangerous high-speed traffic.
The point is that this sort of thing sacrifices the neighborhoods that we ought to be trying to preserve, expand and improve … and does so to further encourage the kind of unsustainable, far-flung sprawl development that we should be trying to avoid in the future. The priorities are exactly backwards. There will always be tradeoffs, but it helps to have the priorities in the right order at the outset.
Protecting the integrity of existing neighborhoods should be a first priority, not an afterthought. In the DC area, that means giving up the pipedream of ever-more asphalt. It ain't gonna happen anyhow. People in the far suburbs will be forced to trains or commuter busses (many of which have become quite plush) by default. Their better solution is to move closer to their jobs. Many of them will still choose to drive, or need to drive, but there's a world of difference between a five mile commute and a 30 or 50 mile commute. And I'll bet most people can find decent affordable housing within five miles of their job.
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