Eight of the ten MBTA workers suspended for sleeping or failing to pay correct consideration throughout work hours over the previous 12 months and a half had been in the end fired by the company, data present.
The terminated workers included 5 bus drivers, a prepare operator, bus inspector and electrical employee, who had been “recommended for discharge” after serving suspensions that lasted both 40 or 70 days.
Two bus drivers had been allowed to return to work, with further security coaching, after serving both a three- or 10-day suspension. An eleventh worker, additionally listed as a bus driver, was issued an infraction discover, however was not suspended, data present.
The knowledge was offered to the Herald after a public data request for “MBTA employees found failing to comply with the attention to duty rule and/or sleeping during work hours,” from Jan. 1, 2022 to July 23, 2023.
“The image that frontline employees present to our customers is a critical element in maintaining the public’s trust,” an MBTA spokesperson mentioned. “It is of the utmost importance that MBTA employees project an image of alertness, professionalism, and engagement in their work at all times.”
The spokesperson added that it’s “absolutely forbidden for any MBTA employee to be sleeping or giving the appearance of sleeping while on duty or paid breaks.”
This contains “deadheading,” or shifting trains or buses from one location to a different with out taking up passengers, when current at layover factors or in non-revenue MBTA automobiles, “or any other situation when employees are in public view,” the T spokesperson mentioned.
“Employees that give the impression of sleeping or lack of attentiveness on duty seriously erodes the public’s confidence in the Authority and damages the image of all MBTA employees,” the spokesperson mentioned.
The launch of data got here simply weeks after the Herald reported on an worker who was suspended after a video surfaced, indicating that he was sleeping commonly in his automobile throughout work hours.
It additionally follows a November 2022 Herald report on prior knowledge that confirmed 17 workers had been suspended for sleeping or failing to pay correct consideration, from 2020 to 2022. Fourteen of these workers, the vast majority of whom had been bus and prepare operators, had been in the end fired, data present.
Following the newest set of knowledge, MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo reiterated what he advised the Herald final 12 months — “that if an employee is disciplined for violating the attention to duty rule, it doesn’t necessarily mean it involved sleeping.”
“It means they were not giving their duties the full attention required to perform their jobs safely and effectively,” Pesaturo mentioned.
What he declined to do, nevertheless, when pressed by the Herald, is make clear what forms of violations may fall below the eye to obligation rule, and which of them could result in longer suspensions or termination.
The company additionally declined to substantiate whether or not “prohibited behaviors” listed in a replica of a 2016 MBTA worker handbook, posted on-line as a part of a public data request made by the Pioneer Institute, fall below the eye to obligation rule.
That handbook states workers are prohibited from “gambling, fighting, or participating in any illegal, immoral or unauthorized activity” whereas on obligation.
It additionally states workers are banned from sleeping or assuming an perspective of sleep, taking part in playing cards or different video games, studying aside from firm directions, and unauthorized use of digital units.
Charlie Chieppo, a transportation watcher with Pioneer Institute, mentioned it’s been “common knowledge” for a very long time that some workers have “no-show jobs” on the T, the place they’re sleeping on the job or not displaying up.
This permits workers to work different full-time jobs, and receives a commission at their different jobs whereas accruing pension time on the T. Vast quantities of time beyond regulation, tough work schedules, and coaching may additionally contribute to the issue, Chieppo mentioned.
As of Tuesday, 9 MBTA workers had already exceeded $100,000 in time beyond regulation, with one other seven logging greater than $90,000, in 2023, in accordance with the state Comptroller’s workplace.
“The issue that cuts across all these various categories is that it’s a place where historically people have felt like they’re not being watched very carefully and can get away with things,” Chieppo mentioned.
“You combine that with a decades-long desire not to cross the Carmen’s Union, and not to do anything that’s going to make trouble with them, and this is what you get,” he added.
Pesaturo mentioned, “Ensuring work rules is an important part of the MBTA’s concerted efforts to provide safe and reliable service to hundreds of thousands of daily riders.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”