Who knew that MBTA “workers” aren’t allowed to sleep on the job?
I believed sleeping on the job was a part of the T job description, not only a perk, however a requirement.
Now the T tells us that they’ve fired eight hacks for both sleeping or “not paying attention” on the job.
Finally, we will perceive why the state is now having to pay bonuses of hundreds of {dollars} to get new workers to take jobs “on the T.”
All of this can be a full reversal from the MBTA’s previous historical past, once you needed to pay a politician, in money, to truly get “on the T.”
The T was once a vacation spot no-heavy-lifting retirement residence. Not for nothing was it referred to as “Mr. Bulger’s Transportation Authority.”
Remember the previous saying about what a job on the T entailed – “Hide and seek for a grand a week.”
Think of the nice perks. At the T, you solely needed to “work” for 23 years. Then you can retire with the total kiss within the mail, in your early 40’s, like at the least two of Whitey Bulger’s nephews, in addition to a profession hack named Rooney.
That 23-year pension seize is gone.
Also, you can work in a “counting room” in Charlestown and stuff as many quarters into your pockets as you can handle to stroll out to your automobile with out toppling over.
The counting room is gone.
The MBTA used to have its personal energy plant, consider it or not, in South Boston. The jobs on the energy plant, on First Street, value greater than, say, a bus driver’s job, for apparent causes.
I heard a bugged dialog as soon as, when the feds had been rounding up Whitey’s cocaine sellers. Two of Whitey’s clever guys had been discussing what sort of T jobs they needed. One of them talked about, sure, a bus driver’s job, which even then had been obtainable for brief cash, possibly $3,000.
“Are you crazy?” the opposite hood stated. “You want the power plant!”
It value much more, however you didn’t should cope with the hoi polloi, let’s assume. It was in Southie, simple strolling distance to about one million barrooms. And these had been simply once you went to work, which was seldom.
Let’s face it, it was so much simpler to seize 40 winks on the energy plant than it’s to sleep on a bus you’re driving, particularly if it’s transferring, though everyone knows most T buses aren’t transferring, and are OUT OF OPERATION, similar to the rapid-transit strains are the furthest factor from speedy.
After a couple of years of trashing your liver, for those who couldn’t make it to the 23-year mark, you can take a fall, as they put it within the automobile barns and bus yards. You know the way a coronary heart physician known as a heart specialist, a most cancers specialist is an oncologist and so forth.
If you labored on the T and needed out with a full 72 no-tax incapacity pension, you went to a specialist both in Southie or Brighton. The T docs had been referred to as “fallologists.” For docs, it was a profitable racket, er observe.
When a public company is as uncontrolled because the MBTA – and it nonetheless is, in fact – the “workers” are likely to get lazy, and even lazier. Your most elementary felony survival instincts start to atrophy.
I bear in mind protecting one of many Quartergate busts, once they dragged a bunch of T dirtballs into Boston Municipal Court for his or her preliminary appearances. Everyone, together with the native hookers, shoplifters, brawlers and so on. who had been awaiting their very own hearings, was amused by the newest round-up.
So the clerk was studying the fees in opposition to certainly one of them, an actual fats payroll patriot, and he talked about one thing concerning the penalties. The tubby T employee gasped, grabbed his chest like Fred Sanford and keeled over.
Everybody within the gallery burst out laughing. How unhappy – that the T hacks had been so dumb that they didn’t notice that you simply don’t “take” a coronary heart assault at your arraignment, you’re taking it at your sentencing.
But once more, once you by no means should do something, any time, you invariably get sloppy.
You’ve heard of the “workplace culture?” In Massachusetts, it’s the “sleep-place culture.”
When Mitt Romney was leaving the governorship, they took down some Turnpike workers who had been double-dipping at a second hack job, typically “working” greater than 24 hours a day.
In 1990, certainly one of Whitey’s drug sellers who didn’t have a T job was busted sleeping via his in a single day DPW metropolis shift on Frontage Road, earlier than he went to “work” within the morning on the MWRA. He’d been employed by a spouse of certainly one of Billy Bulger’s most loyal stooges within the Senate.
After 9/11, there was a short burst of transparency at Logan Airport. It was found that the Massport electricians had what amounted to a makeshift bunkhouse, the place the in a single day shift snoozed their shift away.
Of course, Massport has turn out to be the brand new MBTA. When it involves dying and going to heaven for the native hackerama, Logan Airport is what the MBTA energy plant on First Street was once – the final word resort vacation spot.
The MBTA was once Mr. Bulger’s Transportation Authority. Massport is now Mr. Travaglini’s Transportation Authority after the lifelong hack Bobby “Trav” Travaglini. At age 71, Trav is now a bigtime lobbyist after a profession trajectory of precinct captain, district metropolis councilor, state senator and eventually Senate president.
Even in his dotage, Trav’s obtained loads of clout – simply ask Gina Fiandaca, who simply obtained whacked as state secretary of transportation.
She’d been tangling with Tom Glynn, one other migrant from the T to Massport. When he was chairman of the Massport board, Glynn had taken care of Trav’s, uh, requests.
So when push got here to shove, Trav needed to facet with Glynn, not his lifetime East Boston neighbor Gina. That’s how issues go at Massport. It’s the life they’ve chosen, a lifetime of leisure.
You would possibly say, Massport is the brand new MBTA. I imply, Massport doesn’t must pay anyone any bonuses to work there, do they? And no one ever will get busted for sleeping on the job – name it hack omerta.
(Order Howie’s new guide, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
