Having your employer pay for your $10 commercial driver’s license sounds fair. So the MBTA used to send bus drivers a $10 check reimbursing them for their license fees. They could look forward to the “pinkish” (by one account) checks on or near their birthdays. An average of 2,100 employees received this annual perk.
But as the MBTA continues to see shades of red (ink, that is), the practice, which had gone on for more than a decade, didn’t look too thrifty. So as a part of the continuing search for “reform before revenue,” the agency decided to put an end to it, especially since it had never been spelled out in union contracts.
The Carmen’s Union, the T’s largest, responded by arguing that the reimbursements were a “long-standing, clear, and mutually understood” practice, according to an MBTA memo.
Can you say “arbitration?” On Thursday, a labor arbiter ruled that the MBTA no longer had to provide license fee reimbursements to bus drivers.
Sounds like small potatoes, but when you’re the MBTA, these Paleolithic Age practices have a way of adding up.
Last July, an arbiter ruled that customer service agents could no longer take 15 minutes for “wash-up time” — in effect, getting paid for eight hours instead of seven hours and 45 minutes. Nor could union employees systemwide receive vacation pay advances, or get out of work early to cash checks. Now they must enroll in direct deposit or, if they don’t have a bank account, use an agency-provided debit card. Those award provisions saved the MBTA more than $1.5 million (most of that sum coming from the ending of wash-up time).
Sounds great, until you consider the Transportation Finance Commission recommendation No. 9 from nearly two years ago: “The rate of growth of MBTA fringe benefit costs should be reduced” to gain expected new savings of… now channel Dr. Evil here… $1.1 billion dollars.
