In the past I’ve been fairly unsparing in my criticism of the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, but before I register my displeasure again, let me say I do think he works harder at reporting than most in the blogosphere. So I hope that the following is taken in constructive manner.
But as it stands, I’m dumbstruck that Greg Sargent hasn’t issued some sort of clarification and/or correction to a blog post that he wrote yesterday where he tries to debunk a GOP talking point on public sector unions in Wisconsin:
Turns out that a little digging proves beyond doubt that pointing to this as evidence that public employees are overpaid is entirely bogus.
“Entirely bogus” and “proves beyond a doubt,” eh? That’s quite the gauntlet we’re throwing down. But what I find amazing about this blog post is that Sargent’s own reporting on the matter completely undermines his bold assertion. He continues:
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, but he was also able to add 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.
What? So let’s be clear here — it is entirely correct that a bus driver in Madison earned $160,000 a year here. And he did this through union negotiated work rules that allowed him to work a positively insane amount of overtime. According to Metro Transit spokesman, Nelson drove a bus an average of 77 hours a week or 11 hours a day, every single day of the year. Of course, it’s logical to assume he didn’t drive every single day of the year. If he took two days off a week, his average shift was 15.4 hours.
The problem here is actually much worse than simply paying someone an exhorbitant salary — union work rules allowed drivers with seniority to sop up a disproportionate amount of overtime instead of spreading it around. Any bus driver who spends that kind of time behind the wheel is going to get tired and that makes him a public saftey hazard. Would you feel comfortable riding home every day on a bus route where the driver is in his 15th hour behind the wheel?
Alternatively, I wouldn’t rule out some kind of corruption here that artificially inflated the number of hours he drove. I’d be curious to know whether the bus driver is retired, because pension calculations are often made based on the salary of the worker in his final years, so union workers routinely scheme to find ways to spike their salaries. But either way, this is hardly flattering to unions.
But Sargent is still so obdurately unaware of what he’s just revealed that he’s not done shilling for the union:
Is he kidding? The whole messed-up situation was created by collective bargaining in the first place, and it was the city — not the union — that took the initiative to fix it. Of course the problem was eventually fixed through collective baragaining! The problem with unions is that they have monopoly power over work rules, so every problem must be solved through collective bargaining. There’s no other option.
As near as I can tell, Sargent is factually incorrect when he says the claim that a bus driver made $160,000 is “entirely bogus.” And he ignores the evidence revealed by his own reporting that suggests that the problem may even be worse than the insinuation he’s trying to debunk in the first place. He’s a better reporter than this, and I hope he sees fit to address these problems.
