Senior bus drivers in Madison, WI may no longer be earning six-figure incomes due to overtime hours. According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison city officials and union representatives agreed to a three-year contract that would prohibit senior drivers from making large sums of money by monopolizing overtime hours. Earlier this year the State Journal reported that Madison’s highest-earning employee in 2009 was a bus driver who took home $150,000, of that $79,000 came from overtime hours. Also, the Journal investigation revealed that seven other drivers made more than $100,000 in 2009. The new contract spreads out overtime evenly to all drivers. The Madison City Council will vote to improve or reject the contract next week. If passed, the contract goes into affect January 1. The contract includes a 3-percent pay raise for 2011, followed by a 2-percent raise in 2012. For more, visit www.host.madison.com.
First, let’s all be clear: this is a contract that is in place in MADISON, not everywhere; as a former member of ATU Local 998(Milwaukee), I can tell you that seniority was not the #1 method of assigning day-off runs or overtime trippers-so… lets don’t all start chasing our local MCTS operators around with pitchforks and torches.
And everybody remember-those Madison operators may have negotiated that rule into previous contracts-but management signed those same contracts into effect; the Local didn’t take over the buses and payroll offices at gunpoint. While I don’t think it’s good business to assign overtime based solely on seniority, I’m not going to blame any of these guys/gals for makin’ hay while the Sun shone…