Say It Ain't So Already

About That $160,000 Bus Driver

March 16, 2011 at 4:07 PM Leave a comment

The $160,000 bus driver is the 21st Century version of the welfare queen driving to the unemployment office in a Cadillac:

(Image via.)

Wisconsin GOP state senator Randy Hopper — a top target of the Dems’ recall drive — is running a new ad that slams public employees by decrying a “union bus driver in Madison making $160,000 a year.”

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Mich Rusch, a spokesman for Metro Transit for the city of Madison, tells me: “It’s not fair to point to public employees as being overpaid based on this situation.”

Here are the details, as provided by Rusch. The driver, John Nelson, was able to earn $160,000 in 2009 not because of his annual salary, but because he worked a huge amount of overtime hours. He was able to do this because of previous rules, negotiated by Teamsters local 695, that allowed drivers with most seniority — and the highest salaries — to rack up large amounts of overtime. As a result, in 2009, Nelson worked 1,896 hours of straight time. And he added on a whopping 2,012 hours of overtime. This, not the exorbitant salary public employees supposedly enjoy, is what accounts for his huge haul that year.

Is Nelson overpaid? Starting bus drivers in Madison earn $17 per hour. Nelson has been working as a driver for 36 years, and his salary in 2009 was up to $26 per hour. There are other ways a bus driver can rack up more money, such as working at night or on vacation days, but all in all, his basline salary has not gone up that much . When working overtime he earns roughly $39 per hour. This, after working this job for nearly four decades.

But wait, it gets better. It turns out that pointing to Nelson as an example of what’s wrong with public employee unions is thoroughly bogus in another way. According to Rusch, the city of Madison went to the bus drivers union last year and told them the rules allowing the highest-paid bus drivers to snap up the most overtime were a major problem for them. Turns out the union agreed, and renegotiated a deal to limit overtime in a way that has left Metro Transit happy. And guess what: That deal was negotiated through collective bargaining.

Folks, if a Republican is talking, s/he’s lying.

Entry filed under: 2010 Election, Corporatocracy, Dumbed Down, Fascist America, Our Tax Dollars, Repression, Republicans, Including Wingers & "Moderates", Teabaggers, Unions, We the People. Tags: .