What other businesses, union and non union, have this problem?
[From article]
The Boston Carmen’s Union has been quietly fighting an MBTA reform meant to stop workers from taking phony sick days before and after Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July — an abuse the agency says has led to hundreds of dropped bus and train trips.
The Carmen’s Union has been challenging an August 2013 MBTA special order forcing workers to lose their holiday pay if they call in sick on a work day before or after Christmas, Turkey Day and the Fourth “without good cause.” The policy was intended to curb abuse of regular sick days as well as time taken off under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
The order, the MBTA said in a statement yesterday, “was issued in an attempt to curb absenteeism” on the days around holidays, which often led to “spikes in missed bus and train trips on those days.”
The T recorded a combined 129 missed bus trips on Christmas Eve and Dec. 26 in 2012 for “personnel reasons,” and a whopping 236 trips on the days before and after July 4, 2013.
[. . .]
The special order has been in arbitration for more than 20 months.
[. . .]
The fate of the T’s 2013 special order now rests with an arbitrator whose decision will be binding and not subject to a review by an outside agency. That’s another perk enjoyed by no public union in the state outside the MBTA.
[. . .]
The panel found that the average T employee misses 57 days of work, mainly by using the FMLA.
However, the Herald has since reported that by last year, the average train operator was actually taking 68 days off — well above the figures tallied by Baker’s panel.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/04/carmens_free_ride
Carmen's free ride
Union fights to keep time off
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
By: Matt Stout
Boston Herald
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