Amtrak Employees Claimed to Work 40 Hours Per Day

[Rover]

The audit released by Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) Thursday found examples of abuse in the overtime system, which totaled nearly $200 million in overtime pay last year.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/amtrak-employees-claimed-to-work-40-hours-per-day/

Timesheets for employees of Amtrak are riddled with abuse, according to a recent audit report, with cases of workers claiming over 40 hours of work in a single day.

“[Calendar Year] CY 2014 timesheet data revealed trends and patterns that indicate potential fraud, waste, and abuse in the reporting of overtime and regular time,” the audit said. “Some of these trends and patterns may be justified because of the complexity of union agreement rules, the nature of jobs, and the functions employees perform.”

“However, our prior investigative work has shown instances in which employees have fraudulently reported hours not worked,” the OIG said. “We believe that these trends and patterns merit further analysis and, if appropriate, action by management.”

One such trend was employees claiming the impossible feat of working 48 hours in a single day.

The union agreements governing Amtrak and its employees are numerous and complicated, a matter alluded to by the OIG. The complexity arises from train employees belonging to different types of unions. Overall, there are 14 unions with 23 different collective bargaining agreements, each with their own rules for calculating employee time and pay.

Amtrak’s payroll system itself is complicated. “The company uses six timekeeping systems to process timesheets and calculate wage payments,” according to the OIG, as well as 179 “unique timekeeping absence and attendance codes.”

 

[FormerOBS]

Interesting. Maybe I'm behind the times, but I've never heard of the Washington Free Beacon before, and haven't seen this in any other media source. As I have mentioned before, I also have serious doubts as to the actual political independence and practical understanding of the supposedly independent O.I.G. nowadays.

The article fails to mention how often this situation occurred. If it occurred with one or two or three employees, I can see a possibility that there is an isolated case here and there. I suppose it's possible that there is a provision in the contract of some craft(s) which count overtime or holiday pay in such a way that the number of hours is multiplied, although my own craft never had any provisions that generous. There is also the possibility that this just represents a mistake.

Let's hear more from established, reliable sources before jumping to conclusions or contusions.

Tom

 

[FormerOBS]

Unable to edit.

I wanted to add that the article also fails to say what crafts are involved. Much too vague for my tastes.

Tom

 

[Carolina Special]

The article links to what appears to be a PDF of the audit which has more details on the positions supposedly involved.

 

[ainamkartma]

Well, all I can say is that I have seen payroll systems in which it would be very very easy to put your whole week's time in for one day...

ainamkartma

 

[amamba]

Well, all I can say is that I have seen payroll systems in which it would be very very easy to put your whole week's time in for one day...

ainamkartma

That is what I was going to say. Is it possible that its a data entry error, where someone is entering a week's pay into one day?

 

[FormerOBS]

If I could have gotten away with what is suggested, maybe I could have retired a lot sooner! LOL.

 

[Paulus]

I'd love to know how one guy managed to rack up 769.65 of OT over 9 weeks with zero regular time. Though the 147 days straight is another interesting fellow.

Also, why is the last week of July when seemingly everyone takes a vacation?

 

[Anderson]

I suspect no small part of this is simply loading hours in wrong (i.e. an LD employee booking an entire trip on their day of arrival or departure). Either that or Amtrak has some Big Law refugees on the payroll...

(To explain, major law firms are infamous for having had dubious billing situations over the years, including rumors of one lawyer who managed to bill 6000 hours one year in the 1990s).

 

[afigg]

If the issue of Amtrak time sheets is to be discussed, why not read the actual Amtrak OIG report first?

Governance: Profile of Timesheet Data of Agreement Employees for Calendar Year 2014.

There are some seriously questionable time sheets and hours charge patterns in the report. Some are probably legit, but there is almost some serious abuse going on.

 

[pebbleworm]

Nothing out of the ordinary- these are standard San Francisco police department timesheets.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

If Amtrak was/is using an electronic payroll system, either in-house or contract, I do not see how this much time manipulation and falsification can be taking place; the program should either prevent it or raise a flag to the Payroll Supervisors.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Most places of employment that have non-exempt employees( hourly/ non-Management) have their payroll system set up to where an immediate Supervisor must review and sign off on time cards/sheets and certify/ approve all overtime!

No doubt there are employees playing the cheating game when it comes to time worked @ Amtrak! There are also Managers that are splitting the take or else rubber stamping the time sheets!

They deserve to be fired, indicted and put in jail along with the crooked employees!

 

[VentureForth]

This bothers me:

One employee, a locomotive technician, claimed to have worked 130 hours in a single week, with 90 hours of overtime on top of 40 hours of regular time. There are 168 hours in a week.

Doesn't that grossly violate engineer resting requirements?

And, the report doesn't state this, but what if one of those $160,000 wage earners is an LSA working for tips? Are their tips included? Makes you sorta want to rethink the concept.

So, I can buy the whole "putting your time in wrong" argument to a degree. It's a manager's responsibility to check that. OT without regular pay? The point is that nearly 1/6th of Amtrak's taxpayer's subsidy is being used to over pay people. And then the Unions send Stewards to Congressional hearings telling about how they work hard to earn a living wage. I'm sure that's the case with the majority of the folks. I'm not trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but when you get $1.2B from other hardworking people in this country, giving away $200M is inexcusable. And that's just waste amongst the hourly unionized wage earners and doesn't touch waste by management alleged against folks like the NEC Project Managers.

 

[MikefromCrete]

This bothers me:

One employee, a locomotive technician, claimed to have worked 130 hours in a single week, with 90 hours of overtime on top of 40 hours of regular time. There are 168 hours in a week.

Doesn't that grossly violate engineer resting requirements?

And, the report doesn't state this, but what if one of those $160,000 wage earners is an LSA working for tips? Are their tips included? Makes you sorta want to rethink the concept.

A locomotive technician would seem to be someone who works on locomotives at a service facility, not a locomotive engineer who actually runs a train and is subject to federal regulation. That's still a lot of work for one week, must not like to sleep very much. Since the report doesn't state that the $160,000 employee is someone who gets tips, I don't think we can jump to that conclusion.

 

[VentureForth]

A locomotive technician would seem to be someone who works on locomotives at a service facility, not a locomotive engineer who actually runs a train and is subject to federal regulation. That's still a lot of work for one week, must not like to sleep very much. Since the report doesn't state that the $160,000 employee is someone who gets tips, I don't think we can jump to that conclusion.

You are right. I misread that. That is I don't think I'd want a mechanic who was working 130 hour a week fixing the locomotive I'm riding behind. I was very clear to mention "what if". Though probably not $160,000 wage earner, looks like one of the people being investigated ("B" on slide 14, page 16) is redacted in a manner that takes up the same amount of space as SERVICE ATTENDANT (TIP). Looks like all the employees on this page are tip earners (though it doesn't say a sleeper attendant is a tipped position, we all know better).

 

[ainamkartma]

I'd love to know how one guy managed to rack up 769.65 of OT over 9 weeks with zero regular time.

Actually, this one doesn't seem so crazy to me. OT is based on when you work, not how much you work. I work at a particle accelerator, which runs 24/7. I have known people to work 8 PM to 8 AM, six days week, for the entire three month accelerator run cycle. These are normally exempt (salaried) employees, but if they were non-exempt, they'd be getting 72 hours of OT per week for 12 weeks. The management can put them on an altered work schedule in which they are assigned to those times* as their regular work hours, but to do so is a management decision, not a worker decision. I imagine things might not be so different in a backlogged Amtrak loco shop.

ainamkartma

*Or 40 of those hours, anyway.

 

[Bierboy]

If Amtrak was/is using an electronic payroll system, either in-house or contract, I do not see how this much time manipulation and falsification can be taking place; the program should either prevent it or raise a flag to the Payroll Supervisors.

It's easy. I work in the HR department of an organization, and we routinely enter the full number of hours of an employee's vacation into one day/date slot. We use an online system of clocking in and out for our hourly employees.

 

[Paulus]

I'd love to know how one guy managed to rack up 769.65 of OT over 9 weeks with zero regular time.

Actually, this one doesn't seem so crazy to me. OT is based on when you work, not how much you work. I work at a particle accelerator, which runs 24/7. I have known people to work 8 PM to 8 AM, six days week, for the entire three month accelerator run cycle. These are normally exempt (salaried) employees, but if they were non-exempt, they'd be getting 72 hours of OT per week for 12 weeks. The management can put them on an altered work schedule in which they are assigned to those times* as their regular work hours, but to do so is a management decision, not a worker decision. I imagine things might not be so different in a backlogged Amtrak loco shop.

ainamkartma

*Or 40 of those hours, anyway.

For the OBS personnel, such as this one was, you don't get any OT until after working 185 hours in a month. Hence my great deal of surprise at his managing to rack up so many hours.

 

[caravanman]

How many thousand employees does Amtrak have? Highlighting a few dozen cheats and/or mistakes is

maybe just another excuse to "Bash Amtrak" ?

Amtrak is saving huge money with cutting back on the free bottled water... I hope to see that reflected in future

"audits"...

Ed.

 

[tommylicious]

THIS is where you save money.

 

[FormerOBS]

I could be wrong on some details because I've been retired fro Amtrak for over a year and the memory isn't functioning at 100% efficiency, but here's a rough idea of the way O.B.S. overtime pay works:

An O.B.S. employee is guaranteed 180 hours of work, assuming no mark-offs. Workdays lasting more than 8 hours are paid at straight time. Once the employee reaches approximately 185 hours (or is it 190?), overtime begins. Most jobs are scheduled for about 180-185 hours per month. If Management has failed to ensure that there are enough employees available for the work, regular employees are asked to work extra hours. This might be because Management has failed to anticipate normal attrition due to retirements, illnesses, vacations, transfers, firings, or quitting. If it is necessary to ask employees to work extra trips, it is possible for employees to reach 180 hours after only a couple weeks. In all cases, this is done at the request of Management.

I have known employees who have spent 30 days on the road, without a single night at home. I was never nuts enough to do that myself. One or two extra trips per month was about all I could take.

Hypothetically, let's say an employee works 90 scheduled hours, plus 90 extra hours between the 1st and 15th. This is mathematically possible, and I know it has happened. From the 16th forward, the contract requires that EVERY HOUR of every day the employee works is paid at the overtime rate until the end of the month. It is possible (but rare) for that employee to work another 180 hours, or even more in extreme cases, at the overtime rate.

Past experience has taught me to distrust the superficiality of the I.G.'s investigations. I also question the notion that they operate without any hint of political impartiality, although I know the law requires that they do so. It seems that they sometimes impose the preconceived ideas inherent in a 9-5, M-F mentality, on the realities of a 24-7 operation.

Tom

 

[shelzp]

Interesting. Maybe I'm behind the times, but I've never heard of the Washington Free Beacon before, and haven't seen this in any other media source. As I have mentioned before, I also have serious doubts as to the actual political independence and practical understanding of the supposedly independent O.I.G. nowadays.The article fails to mention how often this situation occurred. If it occurred with one or two or three employees, I can see a possibility that there is an isolated case here and there. I suppose it's possible that there is a provision in the contract of some craft(s) which count overtime or holiday pay in such a way that the number of hours is multiplied, although my own craft never had any provisions that generous. There is also the possibility that this just represents a mistake.Let's hear more from established, reliable sources before jumping to conclusions or contusions.Tom

From Wikipedia and I quote "Washington Free Beacon is an American web site that publishes news and associated content from a conservative perspective. It states it is "dedicated to uncovering the stories that the powers that be hope will never see the light of day" and producing "in-depth investigative reporting on a wide range of issues, including public policy, government affairs, international security, and media."
I'm not going to follow along with these guys since I already know what they're trying to do.

 

[Pastor Dave]

I looked up the "Washington Free Beacon" on the web and it seems to be a bit to tabloidish to take their investigative reporting as factual. But, there might be enough of a hint of an issue to warrant it being looked into.

 

[FormerOBS]

I have been told that the report cited by the Free Beacon is genuine. I haven't read that report, but I still question whether the conclusions are quite what they are represented to be, and I suspect the article may contain a certain amount of very selective cherry-picking of facts.

Tom