Rewarding Failure

Yes, the San Francisco Municipal Railway could not tell the city budget analyst how many employees were on its regular payroll. A nightmare of crisscrossing civil service job classifications confused even Rose, a combat-hardened veteran of bureaucratic doublethink. Rose's dogged accountants persevered and eventually reported that Muni apparently was paying a full-time and part-time driver force of 2,240 to operate the agency's 1,401 daily runs.

Even so, the audit determined, the single most significant cause of Muni's inability to keep to schedules was an incredibly high rate of daily absenteeism that corresponded with and caused excessive overtime payments to drivers and mechanics.

How can Muni not have enough drivers to staff its runs, when it appears to have more than enough -- even too many -- drivers? And how do drivers who miss work add to Muni's astonishing overtime bill?

The answers are as simple as addition. The contract with the transport workers binds Muni to employ 1,780 full-time drivers to cover normal operations and contingencies. The union added 53 "light duty" drivers to this, for a total of 1,833. The contract also covers 220 part-time drivers and 187 drivers out on long-term disability or technically unauthorized to be on the payroll, but still paid. (The city appropriated about $100 million to pay the salaries of these drivers.)

But nearly one-quarter of the 1,401 drivers scheduled each weekday do not show up, for some reason. Combined with the misuse of part-time drivers, this absentee rate causes a driver "shortage" most days -- and, therefore, the need to pay overtime to drivers who will come to work to fill out the runs.

After Muni and Mayor Brown conspicuously ignored the meat of his audit, Rose analyzed the new agreement between the city and transport workers and suggested San Francisco change a long list of union work rules. Specifically, Rose asked that the use of part-time drivers be increased, and that 650 operators no longer be guaranteed the weekend off. (The weekends-off guarantee, Rose says, increases overtime payments to fill weekend shifts.)

Rose also castigated Muni's wasteful practice of assigning drivers to "split shifts." To cover both morning and evening rush hours, most full-time drivers work five hours, have time off work, and then work another five hours. This regime guarantees drivers an hour-and-a-half of overtime pay every shift, because they work more than eight hours (plus a half-hour for lunch) in a day.

On the other hand, part-timers are not allowed, by union rules, to work more than five hours per day. If part-timers were allowed to work more hours on a given day, millions in split-shift overtime would be saved, said Rose. Plus, Muni's typically stressed-out drivers would not be so overworked and tired.

Rose's suggestions were scoffingly rejected by Muni management because they might be "a blow to employee morale."

Muni does, however, have a plan to reduce absenteeism.
"Reduction of conflict through public relations improves the working conditions of all operators and, hence, decreases absenteeism and attrition. ... Operations is setting up a computer-aided sensitivity training facility for operators to experience simulated public relations situations by computer interaction. In addition, Muni also needs the cooperation of the press, public, and City officials to improve the social condition in each bus load of passengers."

In other words, computer simulations, positive media coverage, and better passengers are what is needed to encourage Muni drivers to come to work and do their jobs.

Peter Ehrlich loves mass transit. As a boy, he rode the New York subways for fun; in the 1960s, he went west and ended up in San Francisco as sole proprietor of a music store specializing in woodwinds. He lost the store due to hard economic times in the '70s, but he was able to fulfill a boyhood dream: In 1979, he became a Muni operator.

Today, Ehrlich drives streetcars and thinks that "miss-outs stink." Ehrlich says that many drivers feel rotten when service is bad and believe miss-outs should be reduced or eliminated. Every miss-out means that passengers suffer, says Ehrlich.

Clearly, though, not all Muni employees are so customer-oriented.
Over time, Muni employees and their unions have refined the art of the miss-out. There are, for example, "working" and "non-working" miss-outs. A working miss-out occurs when a driver reports to work some time after he or she was scheduled to begin, but before his or her scheduled 10-hour shift would have expired. This working miss-out driver is assigned to an alternate run, with no questions asked.

A non-working miss-out simply means that the driver does not show up to work at all, and does not bother to call in to inform management that he or she won't be there.

Between sick leave and miss-outs, 120 Muni drivers a day take unscheduled absences. Another 210 drivers enjoy scheduled absences (i.e., vacation). This means that Muni needs about 330 drivers a day to fill out its schedules -- and many of those drivers get paid at overtime rates. The Muni mechanics rack up overtime at an even greater rate. (Even Muni subway station agents are afflicted with a 12 percent unscheduled absentee rate; overall, 27 percent don't show up on any given day.)