Well, that's a lot of words which still ends up sounding like you don't want trash collectors to get time and a half to work on Saturday.? Overtime pay really doesn't have anything to do with pensions and health care.
Paul -----Original Message----- From: Dave Axler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; UnivCity@list.purple.com Sent: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 2:52 am Subject: Re: [UC] Talking trash (Was: Re: Illegal trash update) Paul: Actually, I'm not opposed to folks being paid time and a half when they work more than 40 hours in the week, if they are paid on an hourly basis. I don't know if that's the case for Streets Dept. employees, at any level. If they are salaried, regardless of what the salary is, that's a different story. Those of us who are "salaried professionals" find it the norm to put in extra hours without direct, immediate compensation in either cash or time off (though year-end bonuses sometimes make up for some of the pain). Regarding the relationship between this city and its unions, you might want to check out the article in the Inky earlier this week [http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/14175261.html] which reported on a survey recently done by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Essentially, the survey concluded that Philly is at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of the percentage that its employees chip in for both pension and health benefits. The cities in the survey, other than Philly, were Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. The fact that New York, Washington, and Los Angeles were not included does suggest to me that a broader survey would be more accurate. But the results of this limited view are still frightening. Among other things... We pay more in health-care costs per retiree than any of the other ten big cities that were surveyed. We pay more in health-care costs per city employee ($9,841) than any city surveyed other than Detroit, roughly triple the amount paid per employee in private industry in the Mid-Atlantic weekend. In fact, members of three out of four of our city-employee unions pay nothing toward their health care premiums; only the white-collar union members in DC 47 pay any health-care premiums. As for pensions, only Baltimore asks its workers to contribute less to its pension plan. Philly city employees only put in about 1.85% of their annual salary, compared to 9% in SF and 7.5% in Boston. How does this connect with the original issue of overtime pay for sanitation workers? Well, the union worker who gets overtime pay for Saturdays (or double-time pay on holidays, perhaps?) is thus not only getting the extra money on payday, but also the extra matching money for the city's portion of the pension plan...not to mention a higher DROP payout, if he or she is eligible for that program when retirement time rolls around. It's to the individual union member's financial benefit whenever the union negotiates work rules that ensure that the members will get as much overtime as possible while carrying out the normal demands of the job. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: UnivCity@list.purple.com Sent: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 9:26 pm Subject: Re: [UC] Talking trash (Was: Re: Illegal trash update) Dave, if you think people don't deserve time and a half for working on Saturday, that's fine, but don't think paying it is some sort of cave in to labor.? You ought to be surprised if people don't get extra pay for working on the weekend.? Isn't that the way it ought to be? And Tony, I don't know why you have to struggle against the obvious.? All your permutations are complicated, confusing and just as costly.? The simple, easy to remember and consistent solution is to get Friday's trash on Saturday.? Lots of people have trouble remembering to hold the trash after a holiday.? Imagine the fun of trying to remember if you're on the part of the route that is picked up on the correct day, contrary to the rule or on the part that gets picked up a day late as per rule. Or if you're supposed to call in for a special pick up when they forget your can (just to make you paranoid that you're going to be ticketed 4 months later otherwise), which they'll do to correct their error and waste lots of labor, gas and ice caps. Paul -----Original Message----- From: Anthony West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: UnivCity listserv <UnivCity@list.purple.com> Sent: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 7:21 pm Subject: [UC] Talking trash (Was: Re: Illegal trash update) Hmm, that's one good guess ... minus the assumption there's something wrong about getting paid overtime for working overtime. I'm not the slightest bit bothered by the notion that a person who heaves garbage for a living might want to call it quits after 8 hr, and ask for a bit more if you want them to push their route. Nobody's getting rich behind those garbage trucks, seriously. But practice makes perfect and they probably can chuck more trash/hr than we could, if they quit doing it and we all had to fill in for them. So why shouldn't they get tipped on heavy-duty days?? ? I've never lived in a Friday-pickup zone, so I have no clue which way they do it. Maybe they work Saturdays. Maybe they work a couple of extra hours on each of several days following a holiday. Maybe they omit certain side services on 4-day weeks. Maybe overtime is optional or maybe it isn't. Maybe they have a complicated, ad-hoc strategy that employs all the above methods, which works better some weeks than others.? ? -- Tony West? ? Dave Axler wrote:? > Perhaps -- and this is a guess, nothing more -- they get overtime pay > for the Saturday work? Given this city's history of giving the unions > just about anything they ask for, I wouldn't be surprised if that's > the case.? ? ----? 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