By Steve Rhodes
You may have heard about the news this week that the city could save $18 million if it just cracked down on loafing truck drivers who, the city’s inspector general found, are so typically paid to do nothing.
And you would have heard wrong because the media largely missed the point of the report that came out of Joe Ferguson’s office, which was that Richard M. Daley negotiated a terrible long-term deal with the city’s unions that we know was spurred by his desire to assure labor peace for the 2016 Olympics – which will be held in Rio.
In fact, Ferguson said in a statement accompanying his report that “The prevailing stereotype would have it that these workers were wrongfully loafing on the taxpayer dime when they should have been actively engaged in work. Our review revealed that these idle workers were not technically doing anything wrong; remarkably, they were completely fulfilling their defined job duties.”
So what did the media do? It went with the stereotype.
“Nearly $18 million a year could be saved by getting rid of 200 city of Chicago truck drivers who spend parts of their workday loafing or even sleeping, according to a report by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson,” the Tribune reported City of Chicago Urged to Get Rid Of 200 Truck Drivers Who Loaf.
But the point of Ferguson’s report wasn’t that there was loafing going on, but that the city shouldn’t sign long-term collective bargaining agreements like the 10-year deal Daley gave the Teamsters and other city unions for his own political purposes.
Note how the Tribune’s passive construction, though, places blame on the Teamsters.
“The inefficiencies are essentially locked in place by the city’s long-term contract with the Teamsters union that makes change nearly impossible, the report concluded.”
It turns out it was Daley who demanded a 10-year contract; the Teamsters wanted something shorter.
Another version of the Trib version is headlined: “City Inspector General Hits Loafing Truck Drivers.
A more accurate headline would have been “City Inspector General Hits Daley Contract.”
Or better yet: “Inspector General: Daley Deal Wastes $18 Million.”
Perhaps the lead could be:
“Motivated by his fevered Olympic dream, Mayor Richard M. Daley entered into a 10-year union contract to secure labor peace that is now costing taxpayers at least $18 million by paying city truck drivers whose services aren’t needed, the city’s inspector general has found.”
Plenty of other media outlets also missed the point.
WBEZ reported that “City Pays Drivers Millions For Little Or No Work” and only added that “Ferguson also criticized the long terms of some labor contracts, saying they don’t allow the city enough flexibility to make changes during unforeseen crises such as the economic recession.”
It’s not that Ferguson also criticized the long terms of some labor contracts; it’s the workers with nothing to do who are incidental, not the other way around. In fact, Ferguson’s recommendations focus squarely on the city’s collective bargaining agreements, not the truck drivers.
Meanwhile, it took the Sun-Times 11 paragraphs in its report to note that “Mayor Daley signed the ten-year agreement with the Teamsters and other unions to guarantee labor peace through 2016, when he hoped Chicago would host a Summer Olympic Games ultimately awarded to Rio de Janeiro.”
What’s more, the Sun-Times reports that “In an arbitration hearing just this week, the city testified that it’s 180 drivers short.”
That’s the city’s testimony, not the testimony of loafing Teamsters. And it could be true if the city’s contract with the union doesn’t allow current drivers to be shifted to where they are needed.
Which isn’t to say I’m pro-Teamster – not when spokesman Brian Rainville spews stuff like this:
“The inspector general is in the business of doing reports and basically acting as a launching pad for people’s political careers. It’s a PR machine. They have to have something to say. But it’s just not true.”
I guess we can thank David Hoffman for opening the door for that complaint to be lodged against every city inspector general to come. But still.
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And so on.
AP: Chicago Has Too Many Truckers.
NBCChicago: Taxpayers Wasting $18M on Truck Drivers.
Chicago Conservative Examiner: Chicago City Drivers Sit Around and Sleep While Costing $18 Million a Year.
Drive that narrative!
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Mark Brown of the Sun-Times came closest to getting it right.
“Back in 2009 the city inspector general’s office received a complaint from a resident with a familiar story. He reported observing a crew of at least nine Water Department employees at work on a project on his block while another employee just sat in his truck reading the newspaper.
“The resident told the IG he confronted the guy in the truck who responded that ‘he was just doing his job.’
“As it turns out, the guy in the truck may have been telling the truth – just sitting there actually is the job of some Chicago truck drivers whose primary purpose is to ferry city work crews and tools to job sites, then wait . . . and wait.”
But we have to wait until the end of Brown’s column, until after he reminisces about a summer job on the railroad. to get to this:
“One target of Ferguson’s criticism was the 10-year labor deal that Mayor Daley struck with the city’s unions back in 2007 to assure labor peace through what were to be the city’s 2016 Olympics. The IG’s report argues the term of the agreement was too long and didn’t allow the city enough flexibility to respond to changing conditions.”
Oh yeah, Daley! He had something to do with this too!
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From the report:
“The prime reason for the inefficient use of [Motor Truck Drivers] is that the City’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the union that represents MTDs, the Teamsters, severely constrains the City’s managerial rights.
“In successive CBAs with the Teamsters, each ratified by the City Council, the past and current administrations have relinquished the City’s ability to combat identified inefficiencies by prohibiting the City from transferring certain MTD responsibilities to other employees or subcontracting the services MTDs help provide.
“The current CBA, in effect until June 2017, does not allow the City to unilaterally transfer work that has been traditionally performed by MTDs to other City employees, except in emergencies. Additionally, the CBA does not allow the City to subcontract any service that would result in the layoffs of MTDs.
“Thus, regardless of operational needs or changing technologies, the City is severely limited in how it can reorganize the many City services that MTDs are involved in delivering.
“The constraints the Teamsters CBA places on the City illustrate the significant downside to excessively long-term labor contracts.
“The current Teamsters CBA, as well as over 30 other City unions’ CBAs, was ratified in December 2007 and runs through June 2017.
“While long-term contracts may appear advantageous to negotiating parties at the time they are entered into, the possibility, and in the case of ten-year contracts, the likelihood, of significant changes in the financial condition of the City and the work requirements of the City make these ten-year contracts unnecessarily restraining for current (and future) management.
“By signing a ten-year CBA with the Teamsters (and with over 30 other unions representing City employees), the current administration and City Council unduly hamstrung not only the current management of City government, but the next six years of management as well, a period that extends well beyond the elected terms of the incoming Administration and City Council.
“In this regard, excessively long CBAs implicate many of the same concerns and considerations posed by long-term leasing of City assets which this office has elsewhere analyzed.”
So it’s not just about truck drivers; Daley entered into 10-year contracts with 30 other unions that similarly constrain common sense and fail to protect the taxpayer. Ferguson goes so far as to compare these deals with the disastrous leasing of the city’s parking meters. So who’s really doing the loafing here?
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The response to Ferguson’s report was disingenuous all the way around.
The Teamsters got a sweetheart deal and they aren’t giving it up, taxpayers be damned.
“As for Ferguson’s proposed ‘reopener clause,’ Rainville had two words: fat chance,” the Sun-Times reported.
“Before this Olympic-inspired contract, there weren’t ten-year contracts, but that’s what the city agreed to. What’s the point of having a contract if you’re just gonna reopen it? When the city was flush, the unions didn’t say, ‘Let’s reopen and get higher wages and benefits.’ You honor your contract,” Rainville said.”
Thanks for helping out, guys.
The city was worse.
“City Budget Director Eugene Munin said the Inspector General’s report ‘suffers from a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of collective bargaining, the laws governing union-employer relations, and the dynamics of the negotiation process.'”
Really? It sounds like the city lacks a fundamental understanding of the nature of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement.
“Officials said the city had obtained ‘work rule improvements for [motor truck drivers] that the city has negotiated to protect taxpayers in the last several years,” including lower salaries for new drivers and assigning injured drivers coming back to work to smaller rodent control vehicles ‘rather than being paid to stay at home.'”
That may be but it has nothing to do with signing politically motivated 10-year deals. But then, Munin says it is aligning contract lengths with mayoral terms – as Ferguson recommends – that would unduly politicize the process.
City law office spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said in an e-mail to Eric Zorn of the Tribune that “When a CBA terminates, the parties don’t start from scratch. You start from the existing status quo and any changes in that status quo have to be specifically bargained for in order to be legal. That’s why it’s extraordinarily difficult for employers to ‘claw back’ and obtain a concessionary contract. It’s a major victory to maintain the status quo.”
But the status quo for 22 years was negotiated by Daley’s City Hall. And it’s not just the provisions of the contract that are problematic, it’s the length. Getting a new crack at it every four years is preferable – for both sides – to living with it for 10.
(And remember: “Teamsters spokesman Brian Rainville said it was the Daley administration, not the Teamsters, that wanted the 10-year deal.”)
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I would be remiss for not noting that veteran political reporter Greg Hinz of Crain’s wrote that “The city makes its point, but in some ways, it would have been better not to have responded at all to the report by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson.”
Besides the fact that the city really avoided the point, don’t you love it when journalists offer advice on how to do better PR?
Instead, it would have been nice for Hinz to demand that Daley and his associates explain themselves. It would have been even better if Hinz and his associates were on the ball when these contracts were signed, but they were too busy cheerleading for the Olympics.
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“This report illustrates the hazards of entering into long-term CBAs in uncertain economic times with severe constraints on managerial rights and flexibility,” Ferguson said in a statement that accompanied the report.
Ferguson also made recommendations which escaped media attention:
* The City Council should consider an ordinance limiting CBAs to four years, tracking the term of the Mayor and City Council.
* Before ratifying a CBA, the City Council should require a comprehensive analysis of a CBA’s impact on the delivery of City services, staffing requirements, and management rights.
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“Also, in order to address the inefficient use of MTDs, the IGO recommends that the City examine amending the current CBA to include two additional provisions.
“First, the IGO recommends a reopener clause to allow for the renegotiation of the CBA based on the financial condition of the City.
“Second, the IGO recommends that a ‘Four Corners’ provision be added to ensure that all the terms of the agreement between the union and the City be placed within the text of the CBA. This means one comprehensive document should be presented and acted on in its entirety by the City Council, and no ‘side letters’ or ‘Memoranda of Understanding’ not expressly incorporated into the CBA would govern the employment relationship. The CBA should also refrain from restrictive references to ‘unit work’ or ‘traditional work’ without allowing the City the ability to reorganize services based on technological change or operational need.
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And then comes the inevitable from the Tribune edit board:
“Think it’s hard to find wasteful spending in Chicago’s budget? Think again. Inspector General Joseph Ferguson says the city could save $18 million a year by getting rid of 200 truck drivers who taxi other workers to and from job sites and spend the rest of their day loafing.”
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Comments welcome.
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1. From Tim Willette:
I also resent the accusation that they’re somehow lazy or shirking their duties or whatever. My friend Woody has a similar job: he drives people from point A to point B, waits, and then drives them to point C. He’s a limo driver.
The problem has nothing to do with the truckers themselves – under a different arrangement, when new assignments come up, drivers could be properly dispatched. But like all wage earners, they’re being compensated for their time, not just the hours they’re actually driving. Granted, the deal seems to make it very difficult to properly allocate resources, but that shouldn’t reflect poorly on the people who do the jobs. Lots of jobs involve waiting – fireman, bartender, cook, call center agent, roadie. Are all of them lazy, too?
REPLY: Reporters spend a lot of time waiting too – for people to call them back. For the press conference to start. For their editors to get back from their three-hour lunches.
TIM: Waiting for the bar to open.
Posted on April 1, 2011