Some Amtrak Employees Abuse Time Sheets, Get Paid For 40 Hours A Day
Yes, you heard that right: all you have to do is work at Amtrak and fill out your time-sheet stating you work 40 hours a day, and you will get paid for that amount of time.
According to an article in The Washington Free Beacon, Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General just released an audit report citing many examples of abuse of the overtime pay.
How much abuse you may ask?
How about approximately $200 million dollars in overtime pay in 2014.
They have plenty of money, you see, because Amtrak is a publicly funded railroad service operated and managed as a for-profit corporation which began operations on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States.
The OIG audit report stated, “[Calendar Year] 2014 timesheet data revealed trends and patterns that indicate potential fraud, waste, and abuse in the reporting of overtime and regular time. Some of these trends and patterns may be justified because of the complexity of union agreement rules, the nature of jobs, and the functions employees perform.”
“However, our prior investigative work has shown instances in which employees have fraudulently reported hours not worked,” the OIG went on to say “We believe that these trends and patterns merit further analysis and, if appropriate, action by management.”
The following are some examples of the abuses:
- One such trend was employees claiming the impossible feat of working 48 hours in a single day.
- “Employees reported 1,357 days in which they worked more than 24 regular and overtime hours
- “Ten employees reported working at least 40 hours in a day.”
- Of those 10 employees, a serving attendant in the Café Car, who earns an average of $23 an hour, recorded 47.95 hours in one day, 31.01 of which were recorded as overtime.
- Numerous employees also claimed to work 20-hour days. There were 1,891 timesheets that recorded a range of 22 to 24 hours in a single day, and 7,145 that listed between 20 and 22 hours in one day.
When you are not using your own money and know that the taxpayers will always bail you out, controls go out the window apparently.
Amtrak did not respond to a request for comment before this story went to press.
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