The winner in the overtime pay sweepstakes in Los Angeles last year was a fire captain with $510,000 on top of his $169,000 salary. No one, however, multiplied their base salary as proficiently as a “trouble dispatcher” for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who received over $357,000, nearly seven times his salary of $55,000.

(Court TV via AP, Pool, File)

The Orange County Register reported that in 2022, more than 3,600 public employees in California received at least $100,000 in overtime pay. They must be exhausted, you might think. But they don’t actually work all those hours. They take advantage of obscure provisions in union collective bargaining agreements that allow them to claim overtime where none was worked.