Overtime and the B Clause
It's back. The B clause has officially been reinstated and will be implemented effective 05 February, despite management's previous commitment to honor its side agreement with the union that was settled to by one of its own suits--see previous posts. And once again, this reinstatement was done on the sly, with no warning to spcos, operations personnel, or the union that it was coming.
This is another example of the general untrustworthiness of the city and the suits at oemc, an agency run mostly by folks with no integrity and who are for the most part clueless about operations. Blogmaster senses this is a reactionary movement on their part to deflect criticisms about overtime that were published in the Chicago Sun Times on 04 February. It is no coincidence that the same day it is publicly reported that overtime exceeds $10,000 for 237 operations floor employees the city responds by reintroducing the B clause in a pathetic attempt to save a few bucks.
Of course the suits cannot simply admit they are actually under resourced, under staffed, and occasionaly incompetent, despite that being exactly the case apparent to every single spco and pco on the floor. Instead, watch the spin that will be coming out of oemc as the suits will blame SOMETHING--not themselves or the suits downtown for FAILING to adequately staff--for the astronomical overtime. It will ultimately be the fault of the union and the contract. It will be because the city has to abide by the contract that allows the most senior pcos to rack up overtime and does not give the oemc any flexibility with regard to how overtime is hired back or whom it is alloted to. In this way, the suits will be able to deflect the real issue from lack of staffing to the union as everyone in the media gets all worked up about city employees making in excess of 100k annually. Blah, Blah, Blah.
Don't fall for it. Blogmaster is tired of this game too, the blame game that puts all of the oemc problems on the operations floor (pcos who "hold" jobs for dispatch; pcos on the medical; pcos who don't take enough calls; spcos who don't nitpick about the small stuff; spcos who don't browbeat the pcos) and not enough back onto the suits for abrogating their responsibilities to their employees, the citizens, and the taxpayers. It is the suits who are in a position to request more staffing (and have the data to prove it); it's the suits who are ignorant of day to day operations and how they impact employees; it's the suits who are unfamiliar with the union contract and often disregard precedent, policy and procedure; and it is the suits who excel at hiding oemcs problem within the confines of madison steet.
posted by CPDDispatch @ 12:00 AM
27 Comments:
Us police officers get denied overtime everyday, why should we get denied why you chair jockies don't?
While I do understand, and completely agree with, the OEMC is understaffed, I just can't quite grasp the fact two people could earn more than $100k in overtime, while there are others that earn less than $5k, with three earning less than $100?? And what I really don't understand is the fact that some of the top earners sleep, or wander, or play the, "My console is broke" card, while doing their overtime shift.
You complain when the media steps in and exposes the flaw in the system, but what you don't realize is the fact that you work in the public sector, and the budget gets published for all to see. "Media gets all worked up..." How do you think the taxpayers feel? And, how do you think those same taxpayers feel when they call 911, and their calls don't get answered, because all the pcos who are on straight time are bogged down, and some of the pcos on overtime are on busy??
If there's a mandatory overtime rotation, it'll spread the wealth out a little, and it will prevent the abusers who don't do jack, except earn a fat check, from hogging it all. And while it may not totally fix the flawed system, it just may make it a touch better.
See how a few people can screw things up for everyone!!!
Don't worry, they will change their minds again in 2 days.
Hang Tough.
i am overtime.
Seriously, everyone who sits down at a position needs to clean it. Lets stop this NASTY bug from going around and start taking eachother into consideration.
PEACE OUT!
HOLLA!
I am the OEMC!
SNL RULES
I am the NY Giants!!
I am Eli Manning!
I am Super Bowl
I am Overtime
I'm Malcolm X!!!
Hey, Angry Taxpayer...go back to sleep under your ScumTimes paper! We have a sign up sheet for overtime and about 20% of the pcos want it on a regular basis. Those with low dollar amounts only work it when MANDATED and NEVER EVER sign up on the voluntary sheet. Even by rotating and spreading the wealth (as you say ) , will still have the same names with the big bucks. So shut the hell up!
Yes, we have our 2% of dog-ass ot abusers.....but we work for our paycheck.
A lot more is needed to even "make it a touch better". If only we could let the taxpayers know what we really have to go through 24/7 every single friggin day ....do you hear me.....365 days a year. What did you do last Thanksgiving & Christmas days? You sure weren't servicing the screaming, cursing, beligerent, whiny, and snobby citizens of Chicago, now were you?
another example of the Democratic Party and the Unions taking advantage of the taxpayers of the City of Chicago. shame! shame!
Wow, anon-1852, you make a compelling argument. If overtime is rotated, whereas #1 gets the first shift, then #2 gets the second, and so on and so on, when the next overtime shift opens up, it keeps going on down the list, until it reaches the bottom. Once at the bottom, if you can follow me here now, it goes back up to the top. Everyone works, and gets mandatoried, not just the top select.
"2% of dog-ass ot abusers...." Just two percent? I don't know about where you work, but it's much more than two percent. Everyday I'm on the Ops floor, I see well more than 2%. "...but we work for our paycheck..." WTF?? You answer phones, and dispatch units to calls. Is there the potential to get shot at? No. Is there the possibility of being in a fatal car accident while your candy-ass sits at your friggin' desk? No. So look, when this changes, let me know.
"...what we really have to go through 24/7 every single friggin day ....do you hear me.....365 days a year...." You personally do not work 24/7. You personally do not work 365 a year. As a group, yes, but personally, no. So STFU, and find a new argument.
"What did you do last Thanksgiving & Christmas days?" I worked, just like you. Well, probably not like you, you probably took a medical, because you were denied time off. Or, you did work, but bitched about it for the whole shift, because it wasn't fair.
The fact of the matter is this, if the job is so horrible, find a new job. Lord knows, we don't need you. In fact, I would bet that if you, and people like you were gone, the OEMC would be a better place to work. But we all know that you're not going to do that, you're just going to come here, and bitch anonymously.
Hey 1:24,if you think that our job at OEMC is just answering phones and dispatching units to jobs then you must also think that the police just drive around with their friend all day and just respond to jobs.
So, 07:02, the pcos are on the streets too, making arrests? Yeah, I didn't think so.
Hey poster RALF: I never compared our jobs at OEMC to the officers on the street....we have mental stress in the room. Officers have to deal with the crazy doped up citz, mental, or gun & knife yielding offender face to face and we know they are in harm's way while working.
I did work 10 of my 12 holidays this past year ....I did not ask for time nor hit the medical ...how about you?
I am not a candy eater , or chip, or cakes ....I do not weigh 230 pounds plus.
I AM proud of the work I do, do my best , and am here to stay to collect as close to max on my pension (if the city doesn't steal it by then)as possible.
Now Ralf, go eat a twinkie and chill out !
Just for a change of pace, I'm going to start at the bottom, and work my way up.....
"...go eat a twinkie and chill out..." 15:45, you absolutely have me pegged. I'm high strung, and continually indulge in the spongy delectable goodness of Hostes treats.
I'm glad that you're proud of the work you do, and that you do your best. Kudo's to you.
"I am not a candy eater , or chip, or cakes ....I do not weigh 230 pounds plus." Good for you. Candy rots your teeth, you know. But the term "candy ass" has nothing to poor eating habits. It means someone who's weak, "A spineless, indecisive sissy."
I worked 11 of 12 holidays this past year. So, neener neener neener.
You are absolutely correct, you never did compare your job duties to that of a PO. You did, however, infer that there is more to it than what it really is. "...we have mental stress in the room..." Sure, you get angry/rude/distraught callers, but the fact of the matter is that you answer phone calls, and tell people where to go.
What you fail to realize is that PO's, fire fighters, the military, all signed on of their own free will. You cannot say that these people joined not knowing what they were getting themselves into. Hell, the media paints a pretty grim picture of what the job all entails. They knew that someday, their number may come up, and still joined the force. They chose that life, they weren't forced into it.
You wanna talk stress, go to Iraq, and then come talk to me about stress.
Wow all the anger.
You know why we have so much overtime. When the" new room " was created it was over 100 bodies shorter than the " old room" . Over time people retired, coppers were put back on the street, corp cadre were fired, and call volume has quadrupled.
Hiring went out the window for years. We are still grossly understaffed!!!
It was not " dispatchers " who made 6 figures. Calltakers did. Those are the men and women who actually answer the call before it goes to a zone for dispatch. 17000 calls coming in for service with 25 people answering at all times is a tremendous amount of contact with a citz, and each call is a " job" .
We are literally plugged into our desk (calltakers and dispatchers) for 6.5 hrs a day nonstop work, with 1 to a dozen transactions ever minute.
Few other city workers can say the same.
Our greatest stress is not the citizen and their endless slew of sh*t with the occassional emergency thrown in. Or the field units having a bad day.
Our greatest stress is our own in house management, who never backs us up, and now believes if we don't sound empathetic on the phone we get suspended! Mgt who suspends you because you followed the SOP's similar to G/O's. A union who is so in bed with Dick and Ruiz that you know for sure
no one has your back.
I do sit in a stale air room, with bad chairs(tremendous back pain),dirty carpet, no windows. no outside air, no sun or moonlight. I have to tell my floor supervisor when I go to the bathroom or the waterfountain. 300 people doing the work load of 450 a day.
Per the article,"hired fire calltakers" who have zero to do with the 911 police side , and it's the police side who answers the intial calls to the center.
Stop being jealous, its the same handful of us working ot everday, because we have the seniority. I waited 5 yrs of no o/t to get to this point of my career, sorry the youngsters are going to have to wait the same. Overtime has been heavy for 8 years now at this level, this is nothing new.
NO ONE was disrespecting our service men and women out there and comparing jobs. We all choose our careers, no one drafted us municipality workers, or the para miltary workers or the military workers for that matter.
We chose our careers to help the common good for all, to better our lives,communites, country in some cases, enhance our property, homes, families lives, to carry our weight, pay our bills. We are not the enemy because we worked overtime.
And thank a serviceman/woman when you see them, for protecting your freedom to spit at each on this blog, about who has the greater stresses. Last time I checked with my friends who came back from Irag, they all said they would do it again. Ask a dispatcher if they like their job, 99 perc will tell you yes. The calltakers will respond the same.
Peace to you all.
--overtime is rotated, whereas #1 gets the first shift, then #2 gets the second, and so on and so on, when the next overtime shift opens up, it keeps going on down the list, until it reaches the bottom. Once at the bottom, if you can follow me here now, it goes back up to the top. Everyone works, and gets mandatoried, not just the top select.--
Not sure I'm following you here. Are you proposing that we replace a system where
a.) 20% volunteers are happy that they got the OT when they want it, and
b.) 80% non-volunteers are happy that they aren't mandatoried thanks to the happy 20% volunteers
with
c.) 20% unhappy volunteers when they are denied, and
d.) 80% unhappy volunteers that they are mandatoried thanks to your scheme?
Hmmm, replace 100% happy workers with 100% unhappy workers? You are lieutenant material.
23:27, what you fail to realize is that if the city truly wanted to save money, it could very well outsource the whole operation.
"Norcomm Public Safety Communications, Inc. was the first private company to enter into the E911 communication service for municipal departments and fire protection districts. Our company has over twenty-five years of experience in emergency communications."
Yeah, but can the alderman call up your boss and tell him to hire his relative?
Outsource! really ? Cool then I can move out of the city limits!
NO private industry can tell me where I must live. Hmmm 250000 city workers,, 250000 property taxes and votes. Gee there is a real trend setter.
But who is going to hire all the reverends kids, and the brass babies ? Oh yea private business.. I forgot.
and another thing the city is saving millions of dollars by paying us ot and not hiring new employees. A new employee cost money.
Training cost
health insurance
death insurance
pension
disability
medicare and fica in some cases
paid holidays a year
furlough days
medical days a year
see its all money they dont have to pay out to a yearly employee
hiring a dozen cost alot more than a couple hundred thousand over the big picture
Can any one of our union reps explain to us in easy understandable English , how in the hell can we figure out (by looking at the NEW rotating seniority lists for voluntary ot) if we were passed over for overtime to file a grievance?
PCO#399
In response to the question of explaining the overtime rotating list ............ in plain english....."the hell if I know".... I've expressed my concerns regarding this list and have pointed out several flaws but my questions remain unanswered.....There is a meeting on friday with the business agent JR with the Deputy Williams regarding this matter. I'm hoping that it will be either stopped and returned to the other way or explained well enough that we will know whether or not we have a grievance. To be honest with you the way it is now it's virtually impossible to tell if you were passed up wrongly or not.
PCO2/Union Steward Driver
See if you can follow this:
You sign up to work Monday for 4 hr extension. You sign up to work Tuesday for 8 hr rdo. You get the call Sunday to work the extension on Monday, you accept and you go to the bottom of the list. Now , you just put your chances of working Tuesday rdo to near ZERO! If you did not sign up to work the extensiion for Monday , and at the end of your shift the next watch asks for volunteers to stay the 4 hrs, you turn on your light to accept. You stay and earn your 4 hrs OT, but your name/number on the rotating list does not change. Some of you now ask , how can that be? Look at it from a different angle. You're working Monday and the boss ask you to work your rdo , Tuesday and you accept. Great! Done deal. Now at the end of your Monday shift, the next watch needs you to stay another 2 or 4 hrs. Again you say yes. Now your watch boss is gone for the day/nite and has you included on the work sheet for the next day. The extension request made just before shift change is an "emgergency manpower shortage situation" (to cover those that just hit the medical,etc.). Sorry for the lengthy explanation , but no short cuts here. So, in summation , if you want the chance for the full 8 hr on your rdos , do not sign up for any extensions to keep you in the rotation. Then turn on that light when they ask for volunteers and hopefully it will be a day you can stay on such short notice.
Good explanation. Its really not that difficult to understand. And it has been happening that the calltakers have been rotated through their list SEVERAL times already, sometimes to the point of the same person being asked to work OT on two consecutive days! This is because some days there are just not enough volunteers signed up. When a watch manager needs 10 calltakers and only 7 are on the volunteer sheet, it doesn't matter WHERE you are on that rotating list, because you are going to be asked to stay, no matter what your number!
Here is a hint: On each shift, the current list is posted on a clipboard on the overtime table. If you want to work your RDO say, tomorrow, check the volunteer sign up sheet and see who has signed up to work. Then go to the most current list on the clipboard and see how many of those names signed up to work are ABOVE your name on the rotating list. It is possible that even if YOU are at number 150 on the dispatcher roster, if numbers 1-149 did NOT volunteer to work, you are going to be the first up to be called, even though your number may seem like you are WAY down on the list. I agree with the idea of not signing up to work extensions to keep yourself higher up on the list when your RDO rolls around, but in doing that you open yourself up to having to do your OT at management's whim, when they decide they need extra help on a spur of the moment. That plan might not work so much for the 1st watch, though...does KB ask for volunteers to stay at six in the morning? And while we are on the subject of KB, I wouldn't sign up to work days no how, just to be offered two measly hours and then tossed to the bottom of the list no matter if I work or not! That is crazy. Doesn't even pay for my gas to get there, AND I'm not entitled to a break!
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