Tatum Report: A confessed overtime scammer claims sleeping on the job was “commonplace” at the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), acknowledged by railroad management and the union.
According to the New York Post, Matthew Keller, the lawyer for 52-year-old Joseph Balestra, stated in court documents that the alleged sleeping was “sanctioned by often-ambiguous rules, policies, and ‘handshake agreements’ between the union and LIRR management.” more here
Who do they think they are, postal workers? Union workers taking the term “feather bedding” too literally.
At my first job after graduating from college, I worked with a man who at one time had worked for one of the American big car companies. He told me about how the union workers had rest areas hidden in the factory where they could sleep during their shift. I could not believe it at first, then ….
My favorite overtime scam story (I got a hundred of them) was what I witnessed down in LA in the late 80’s. All of the LA courthouses had spare rooms full of cots. The LAPD officers that worked nights and who had court during the day would check in first thing with the DA then retire to one of these rooms and sleep. Many of these were jury trials or traffic court where they were either not needed that day or testified for like 15 minutes. The rest of the day they were on the clock sleeping but collecting a full shift of overtime pay. Many of the officers were collecting 150% of their salary just in Overtime. Good gig if you can get it.
Years ago, when I worked at XOM, I caught a guy who had managed to sneak into the supervisors office and add 24 hours of overtime to his timesheet just before they were sent to admin for processing. I had been watching him closely because I had caught him before and took care of it without fanfare. When I discreetly reported it to the affirmative action human resources bitch, I thought she was going to fire me before it was over. I found out later that he was plowing her field. I had made up my mind that if she had gotten me fired that I was going to end her ability to work anywhere by whatever means necessary.
Duh! Mega DUH!
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
At one time, the highest paid employee at my local municipality was a fire fighter, thanks to overtime. If a fire occurred near the end of a shift, the fire fighters would make sure clean-up would last into the next shift. Because of “salary compression”, Batalion chiefs were the only supervisors who were paid overtime. And of course PERS retirement is based on your 3 highest paid years. Oh, and don’t forget, fire fighters and cops are eligible for full retirement after 25 years, ostensibly because they have reduced life expectancy, even though statistics prove they live longer than school teachers. Add in disability retirement, and you have retired cops and firefighters in their early 50s with $10k per month pensions. Because heroes!
I despise overtime. My co-hort is eight people distributed over two states and I have the lowest overtime rate out of the group.
I also do not have (or want) a boat, an RV, a 4wheeler, a vacation cabin, a mistress, a swimming pool or a half million dollar mortgage.
I work to have a life, and I’ve adjusted my needs to not give more of my life than necessary to my employer.
Tammany Hall lives!
Man, this guys an AMATEUR at shirking compared to his elders…
https://iotwreport.com/3-accused-of-creating-man-cave-under-grand-central-terminal/
Just because others may have known you were a scammer, does not make it legal.
“If someone jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?”
Tony R
DECEMBER 29, 2021 AT 12:31 PM
“Oh, and don’t forget, fire fighters and cops are eligible for full retirement after 25 years, ostensibly because they have reduced life expectancy, even though statistics prove they live longer than school teachers. Add in disability retirement, and you have retired cops and firefighters in their early 50s with $10k per month pensions. Because heroes!”
…while I certainly don’t agree with and won’t try to defend MOST of the big city unionized department hiring, retention, and retirement practices, I will tell you just from personal experience that crawling around on your knees with 50 pounds of equipment strapped to you while carrying 50 pounds more while breathing canned air and crawling mostly sightlessly over shattered glass and jagged wood through an environment that is actively trying to kill you really is NOT condusive to your long-term health and CERTAINLY not your muscular-skeletal system in particular.
Tough on the knees and abdomen in particular, to say nothing of the back. It’s a bill that Time is pretty eager to collect, so bo, you’re NOT going to see a ton of 50 year olds running around with chainsaws on flaming roofs, crawling through distorted window frames on Pompier ladders, or humping 1 3/4″ charged line into a basement.
We’re pretty damaged by then. It’s a young man’s game.
Full disclosure: I worked for a small city department as a volunteer and part paid at the end, never got a pension, severance package, or anything other than memories, my helmet I bought myself, my badge, and a jacked-up body that I still have to do physical things with. I was not the right color or sex for the big city jobs so I didn’t profit like they do so I’m not defending anything for myself, but those folks do more and worse than I did so the physical deterioration will be both greater and earlier, and because they DID make a career out of it that only a political few can continue into middle age as Chiefs, I don’t begrudge them compesation for having worked a terribly physical job until they are physically unable to do so any more.
Ain’t no 60 year old gonna walk a 6″ supply line and load it back in the hose bed. Just the way it is.
I don’t know about cops as I never was one, but they have different but still constant physical stresses.
You’re not going to start a new career for the insurance after you’ve spent 20 years wrecking your body every day, is what I’m saying.
So while amounts are debatable, I think other benefits like PERS and its attendant health care really isn’t.
You want young men to sign up to cut you out of your burning car at 2 A.M.?
There’s not too many that can do it physically, and even LESS that can do it MENTALLY, so if you want them to be there, you’d best do something to make it an attractive career choice, especially in the Age Of Professional Video Games Sports, or they simply won’t be there when you need them, its MUCH easier to play Modern Warfare on the PS XBox and go burn shit down for fun later than it is to put the fires out, so yes, they DO need a little incentive…
Many years ago, I picked up my brother at the local Amtrak station. I noticed a shed at the end of the platform but no workers. About five minutes before the train arrived (quite late, it’s Amtrak), three workers came out of the shed, which had a couch, recliners, fridge, hotplate, maybe a toaster oven or microwave, and a tv. They were baggage handlers. My brother’s luggage was not among those taken out of the baggage car. Rather than getting a description and retrieving it themselves, they had us get in the baggage car to look for it. Inside was large single pile of random luggage. No organization to it. After some minutes digging into the pile, my brother found his bag. When the train pulled out, the “workers” went back into their shed to wait for the next train — arriving in six hours, maybe (it’s Amtrak).
Maybe twenty years ago, one of the local TV news programs decided to secretly follow a city maintenance truck around for a day while filming. The highlight was the hour long break the pair of workers took, where they consumed a six pack of beer and threw the empties in the river. The local residents were angry that they littered, and the cities response was “how dare you spy on our workers”. Good times.
Keep in mind that MTA is under the umbrella of the NY gov—seks predator Andrew Cuomo and now the unelected, biotech associate, and polluted gov Kathy Hochul who also colluded with Cuomo and knew of his predatory attacks against women, his murder of multitudes of elderly et al yet did and said nothing.