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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Asshole? Come work for PAT!

...or, This is another reason I hate unions...

So I'm heading home today and walking to the bus stop. I was a minute or two ahead of schedule so I was walking at a normal pace. I round the corner to see the bus already sitting at the stop, EARLY.

And thus, I did what would be expected when it's 35 degrees and snowing (in October, no less)...I ran! As I'm running up to the bus, 10 feet away, the bus driver looks up at me, shuts the door, and points to the next bus stop...a BLOCK UP. Asshole wanted me to RUN a block rather than open the fucking doors.

Mother FUCKER!

So, I called the Port Authority (PAT), and filed a complaint. The nice lady on the phone said, "while it is common courtesy that he would wait to close the doors, he is not required to by contract."

My response, "So he can be ignorant?"

"Yes sir, There's nothing we can do about that..it's in their contract. (aka the union contract)"

"So let me get this straight, he can be an ignorant ass to people all day long and still get paid 50k+ per year?"

"Yes sir."

"and it doesn't have any effect on his performance review."

"No sir. He's not rated on common courtesy or customer service."

So, what this makes me think is that his union is there to protect the assholes. If I were an asshole on my job, I would be canned, but because he's "protected by a union" he get his outrageous raises every year? Fuckers!

Yeah, and for those of you who aren't in Pittsburgh, the PAT drivers are out of contract at the moment and there are talks of striking if they don't get what they want.

Here are some things they are having a beef about in the new contract:

• Provide annual pay increases of 3 percent a year, putting the average hourly wage for bus-trolley drivers at $25.70 and for first-line supervisors at about $30 at the end of the contract in the 2010-11 fiscal year. They don't think this is enough to ride a busload of people around all day!

• Require Local 85 members, who now contribute 1 percent of their base pay toward health care costs, to pay the equivalent of 3 percent by the end of the contract. Oh please, get in line! We all pay for our benefits! Not to mention, the benefits themselves are fantastic.

• Encourage current employees to work longer, most to age 60, and contribute more to qualify for post-retirement health care. Those hired on or after Dec. 1 would not be eligible for post-retirement health care. Did I mention they currently can retire at 55 with 20 years of service and get health care for life? The rest of us will have to be WalMart greeters until we're dead in order to pay for our arthritis meds.

• Increase pension contributions from the current 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent on Jan. 1, and to 6.5 percent effective Jan. 1, 2010. They get a pension!? Fuck them Don't give them this money! I say you decrease it to -.5 by 2010..make them pay for everyone else's pension that used to work there.

• Eliminate overtime for more than eight hours worked in a day, making it payable only when an employee works more than 40 hours in a week, a strategy to reduce chronic absenteeism and prevent employees from making up the lost pay by working overtime another day. Yeah, because these assholes are able to call off "sick", leaving people out in the snow, and then just work an extra 5 hours during the week to make up for the 8 hours of pay. FUCK THEM!

• Eliminate a contract provision that allows employees to show up late for work 13 times before receiving a written warning, a strategy to keep transit service on time. 13 times before a written warning?? Ok, let's put this into perspective. My bus has about 100 people on it. If a bus driver shows up late, my morning route is f'ed up and 100 people are late for work...where we don't get the courtesy of 13 attempts before we get a written warning. I don't think it should come to the point of making 1,300 people late for work before you get written up. Three strikes you're out, pal.

Ridiculous! F'ing ridiculous. And this is why I pay them $70 a month to ride that happy bus. If I could find a job with free parking, I'd be off that bus in a heartbeat. ::end rant:: (can you tell I'm pissed off?)

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2 Comments:

At 10/30/2008 11:55 AM, Anonymous Anonymous's whiny, bitch-ass comment is...

Yes, and let's not forget about the driver's who block the intersections because red lights mean nothing to them or the driver's of certain routes that will drive by you at a bus stop and not pick you up because you are not the right color...

 
At 11/01/2008 11:14 PM, Blogger Scottie's whiny, bitch-ass comment is...

YEY for aunt jeffie!! :) :hugs:

 

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