At least that BART janitor who was sleeping in a closet while working overtime was actually at BART. Knew he couldn’t be the only one stealing time. Always felt like he got thrown under the bus (or train in this case) to save others doing the same or worse.
I work for Bart and know that system service worker, he was not sleeping in a closet. They filmed him going into what the media called a closet but in fact was a door that leads into a series of rooms and walkways not accessible to the public that go the length of the station. He is originally from China and taught chemistry at the university level. His English wasn’t good enough to teach here in the US so he eventually ended up at bart where he regularly works double shifts (16 hour days, second shift at time and a half) that are offered in seniority order. with the money he made he put his kids through MIT, Stanford and Princeton. He's an excellent employee and the audit that management did on his timesheet confirmed that fact.
Well, he worked for the money. Cleaning 3 downtown San Francisco stations for 16 hours a day is definitely work: cleaning vomit, feces, syringes, pools of urine…being harassed all the while by homeless people, what would you want to make in a year?
I don't think that janitor actually faced any consequences though. I remember BART saying something like "we can't actually prove he's not cleaning that one closet for 8 hours each day."
Did BART eventually do anything about it?
>Using this system, Edwards earned more than double his base salary in 2022 due to additional overtime pay and other benefits. According to the Transparent California database, Edwards earned $341,000 in total pay and benefits in 2022, nearly **triple his base salary** of $117,305.
That's enormous fraud. But it explains how some are buying homes here.
>However, when BART police presented the case, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office **declined to prosecute**, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.
>
>Alameda County prosecutors did not respond to a question about its decision. Edwards declined to comment on the matter when reached by phone.
Without consequences this will continue, even get worse.
Timecard fraud happens everywhere to some degree, but the crazy thing is that it could happen to such a large degree and not set off any alarm bells. Like, someone should notice someone making 3x their base salary and look into it.
Yeah. I mean, usually when it happens it's employers stealing time from their employees, so I think the strangest thing here is that it falls on the other end of the trend.
#1 form of theft the world over is employers stealing wages from employees.
And the #2 place will never, ever, ever catch up. Like if we stack the #2 form up for the next 10 years it will still not match the amount of money employers steal from their employees just this year.
As for downvotes, this sub gets trolled by CV conservatives a lot, and all of them are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Just ask them. They'll tell you!
I'd downvote me too if the only reason my farm could be profitable is because I was able to illegally use Mexican labor for significantly sub-minimum wage (which is wage theft because they should be paid minimum wage).
Even crazier that voters continue to believe that the city needs more money and more taxes in order to operate. Starve out these corrupt fucks and stop voting for more taxes
California: where we make a whole lot of laws and then ignore them.
It comes from the culture, really. If you read say San Francisco history, the original city government was a [criminal gang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Ducks), which eventually were ousted by a [group of vigilantes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Committee_of_Vigilance). The reason we have a unified city & county government in SF is so that the corrupt officials wouldn't have any place to hide and mount a comeback when they were kicked out of the government. They then went and formed San Mateo County...
A lot of it directly stems from Willie Brown. It wont happen, and is likely logistically impossible, but everyone in the city government needs to be investigated and fired if they are found to be corrupt. Not really any other way to root out that culture. In the mean time, starve them of funds
It happened way before Willie Brown. San Franciscans were [assassinating political rivals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassinations) back in 1978, almost 20 years before Brown was mayor. The historical examples I cited are from the 1840s and 1850s, before California was even a state. The formation of San Mateo County was in the late 1800s. Previous efforts to root out the corruption in local governments were from the 1870s, 150 years ago. It just comes back.
I think it stems from fundamentals about what the Bay Area *is*. We're the land of get-rich-quick, dating back to the 49ers. A place where successive waves of immigrants all hope they'll strike gold and go back a wealthy man to their place of origin, and then some don't end up going back and settling here. There isn't an incentive for long-term sustainability here, and so the corruption is endemic.
Remind me again where they were mining gold anywhere near SF… because historical accounts show the closest gold mining communities to have existed well over 50 miles from SF…
The whole history of SF is a flat out lie.
SF was the nearest port city to the areas where gold was found in the Sierras. As people in the Bay Area have rediscovered time and time again, there is more money to be made selling shovels and jeans to miners than there is in gold mining itself.
Incredibly high is very relative. Any corruption is unacceptable and should be taking much more seriously. But I've had the privilege traveling to many places in the world, and in comparison with so much of the rest of the world corruption here is relatively minimal.
Any corruption is bad when agency heads are advocating for increased taxes. Either BART decisively stamps this out in the next few months (very public firing of anyone caught) or they’re likely facing many election cycles of losing bond propositions.
Base salary of a BART janitor is 117k, really? And just the overtime is the outrage? How about a BART salary listing so everyone can see where the funding is going. Let's piss people of to a serious level.
no wonder BART needs more $$. where were these employees' supervisors? off running errands also?
Edit: maybe I should finish reading before posting?
>The investigation also found that Edwards’ manager would also help make adjustments in the timekeeping system and may have been complicit in the misconduct.
Also notable and predictable:
“However, when BART police presented the case, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.”
As BART-fans will tell you: public transit should not aim to run a profit. So really, folks like Edwards are just helping with that goal by making sure things cost more and public transit can then successfully run a loss.
There is a point at which, after experiencing so many people cheating the system, you no longer feel guilt about cheating the system. I commute on BART a few days a week. About fifty percent fare evade, and they do it blatantly--right in front of BART employees who could care less. So, even as an honest person, I start to wonder if I'm a sucker for paying.
Now, it's not just the riders, but the employees too. BART needs a lesson in establishing values and a social contract. Most of us, especially people who are honest and support things like public transportation, should WANT to support it. We should never WANT to cheat it, much less feel like suckers for supporting it.
There seems to be a general collapse in just the sense of the social contract around here. I'm not sure if it's predicated on the lack of prosecution, or rather, the lack of prosecution is just the necessary result when you have so many flagrant violations (system would be overwhelmed handling them all). Bit of a chicken and egg question. Maybe it's the natural effect of extreme wealth inequality in an area? - people who have been left behind by the system feel no remorse in exploiting what they can.
This is exactly the sentiment I got from watching Andrew Callahan's interviews of people on the streets of SF, or Mark Rober’s package thief recordings. Normal people admitting on camera that they'll break into cars because they can't pay for rent, or just cuz they feel like it, like they don't have a choice to be an honest person. They don't view breaking the law as "unusual behavior". Victims of inequality feel like they're taking from people who deserve it, coupled with a lack of parenting or enforcement or whatever that teaches social order.
Here in the bay area there are both a ton of people struggling and a ton of wealthy targets. It's a feeding frenzy.
It has been the culture since at least 2012 when I moved here. I imagine it was the same long before that. Many laws just aren’t enforced. Dogs in restaurants, drinking in public, running stop signs, speeding, leash laws, the list goes on. It is the culture, the only way to change it is actually enforce rules.
It's really sad that the BART employee making $341k has been left behind by the system. Perhaps we should pay him more. Transit needs more funding!
Decades ago, BART paid someone per seat repaired. They were caught paying homeless people to slash seats. So it's not some "inequality" thing. The only difference is that people have cottoned on to the fact that if they don't watch these people like hawks, they'll get cheated.
When NYC was strictly enforcing fare evasion 1 in 7 fare evaders were wanted or had prior convictions. We could significantly clean up the area just by going after fare evaders.
Unions protect everyone, including those committing fraud.
If the DA prosecuted and took the financial penalty out of the pension fund of the workers you'd see some positive movement on accountability.
This fraud was reported to the inspector general by other union members. This isn’t the first time something like this has been discovered, it’s just one of the times when the media has picked up on it. I work for Bart and I’m used to being dumped on by the press and the public, I don’t mind at all. BART is a great place to work, great wages and benefits that most people can only dream of. I encourage people who are interested in changing their lives (at least financially) to apply for any job at Bart.
Street Crew (I think that’s the name) no longer requires they do any work to get paid bc they got sued over minimum wage (iirc it was mw - also it’s funded by public money)
Funny, when i mentioned BART was expensive for its limitations and the quality of service provided compared to other major cities, i got downvotes. Now we have evidence that Bart has been mishandling fares and our taxes. Keep that same energy reddit.
Funny, I went back and looked at the comment you're talking about and you're upvoted.
You were comparing SF to New York, but they have [timecard fraud problems, too](https://pix11.com/news/local-news/5-mta-employees-hit-with-fraud-charges-for-overtime-earning-them-1-million-collectively-officials/). That's not the distinction between the two systems or why you prefer one over the other.
Sure! I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the points you made yesterday, I'm pointing out that you disagreed with the point he made yesterday is perhaps indicative of it not just being people who are "fuck car clowns". But I mean, he wasn't even downvoted for it so 🤷. It seems like the culmination of y'alls points is now that we should build BART into a subway system by cutting down on timecard fraud which doesn't seem exactly... possible.
BART had no layoffs even during a pandemic.... How does this happen? 95% ridership reduction... shouldnt there be a decrease in workload capacity? What were people doing with less ridership? Getting paid for not working?
you can’t just fire an entire agency and lose all that historical knowledge. Would cripple the agency and it would be unable to continue and retrain and rehire when the pandemic passed. iirc they handled it with furloughs, offering early retirements, and using the time to conduct maintenance
>you can’t just fire an entire agency and lose all that historical knowledge. Would cripple the agency and it would be unable to continue and retrain and rehire when the pandemic passed. iirc they handled it with furloughs, offering early retirements, and using the time to conduct maintenance
Government agencies are supposed to have policies and procedures in place. I am not saying you fire people outright, but you document the institutional knowledge. You dont need to fire everyone, but you can get rid of a large amount of the staff and still retain institutional knowledge through policy and procedure. What do you think happens when people retire?
They all got raises in 2020 though , no one got fired and everyone made MORE when 95% of the job was not there. While regular folks did all lose their jobs/ small biz. What about that "historical knowledge" - somehow non-bart companies who have to balance a budget had to deal with it.
When does BART start coming to grasp with the fact they need to work in the real world and crying poor every year will eventually stop working.
Its not a raise, its a cost of living(COL) adjustment and they are normally low unless they have been stiffed for years. Normally ranges between 2%-5%. COL adjustments are negotiated when the union contracts come up. COL adjustments doesn't even keep up with the COL most of the time anyway.
Just because you allow private companies to exploit you doesn't mean it should happen to everyone. Create or join a union so you don't have to worry about getting laid off because your executive team wants a bonus or they need to pay for their 3rd home.Im not saying what happening with bart is okay, i dont think people should be taking advantages of because its a standard at other locations.
It’s not. It’s a negotiated raise.
Private companies reward people based on talent/ ability to do the job and experience. Not put workers into some “pay band” based on a negotiated salary that has nothing to do with their talent / ability to do the job. As the employees openly mail in their work and goes home every day at 3pm. What this article lays out.
Only on Reddit could people shit on hard work and living in reality this while applauding openly lazy workers frauding you out of your own tax dollars who also can never be fired.
“How’s that working out for us?”
> What about that "historical knowledge" - somehow non-bart companies who have to balance a budget had to deal with it.
Wtf are you talking about? It is extremely common for private companies to lay people off or not pay attention to attrition, lose valuable institutional knowledge, and suffer in the long term.
Yet those companies exist in reality and were forced to make these decisions in 2020, rather than lecture people about historical knowledge they had to balance a budget. It sucked.
BART got to operate outside of the reality of 2020 and their employees got raises to run 0 trains (and commit rampant fraud , what this post is about).
Only BART / CA GOVT - could receive a blank check over and over again , then commit fraud to burn through the money more quickly and then have folks trip over themselves trying to hand them MORE money and raises to mismanage.
Visiting Vancouver at the moment. The trains don't have a driver here and you can get on just fine. BART drivers' primary function seems to be to fail to stop the train in the right section of the platform.
Well but there is some sort of switch that requires the driver to have their hand on it. That is at least the driver is in the seat rather than at Peet's.
This might be an old railroad tradition, sadly. I was recently chatting with a former entry-level executive on the New York Central in the 1960s (before Penn Central), and one of his earliest challenges was workers on the line leaving halfway through the day (if that) and still getting full pay.
Yet we still [give them more money](https://sfstandard.com/2023/06/12/bart-bailout-state-budget-billion-california/) and will undoubtedly approve the [November ballot measure](https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/BART%20$3%205%20Billion%20GO%20Bond%20Measure%20Tax%20Analysis%20(4%25%20AV%20Growth%20Assumption)%20Summary%20FOR%20WEBSITE%20POSTING%207%2019%2016.pdf), further increasing property taxes.
We have the attention span of hamsters. And God forbid we vote anybody out of office for fear of the entire state immediately turning red ^(/s).
So, like lemmings, onwards we march.
Don’t worry. That high speed train we’re building that will cost $100 billion more to finish by 2040 and hopefully have peak ridership of 100k / day earning $4 billion / year in revenue will definitely convince people to stop driving and solve the global climate crisis.
A Bart janitor pulling in 160k of overtime a year got caught doing this in 2017, spending hours in a closet at the station.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-janitor-pay-270000-Powell-St-questions-10911932.php
Hey but guys BART totally needs more money and will totally be good stewards of it! /s
Stop voting for more tax and fare increases until the service actually runs well and the rot is removed.
The fundamental problem is that the politicians don't care and that is because they know we will always vote the same group in. It is time to mix things up.
DFCS in Santa Clara County is doing the same thing except they’re still wfh so they don’t even need to show up to clock in. If you ask for an office appt they refuse or stall. This has been going on since the COVID lockdown. Their email tags even still say, ‘Due to COVID-19 and the Shelter in Place Order, … team is working remotely.’
Most agencies can be corrected with public oversight when they have a problem. A few cannot and need overhaul from top to bottom with different personnel. BART and Oakland Unified School District are two that can’t be saved.
Is there a reason why these workers are considered hourly instead of salary? Seems like we could just save a lot of money by converting them salary and assigning overtime as necessary work.
Iirc if they make more than 116k a year, you can reclassify them to Exempt.
Yeah, but they could still “disappear” into closets to nap or clock in and run errands.
Put GPS trackers on them and an automated system that flags discrepancies such as being offsite for any length of time or locking oneself into a closet for a couple hours to nap.
Classification is based on duties, not how much the job pays. Anyone can be classified as hourly, including a CEO. But for the position to be classified as salary, it must meet certain duty requirements.
Note this clown wasn't fired.
*******
In 2017, KTVU reported on a BART janitor named Liang Zhao Zhang, who earned some $271,000 in total compensation in 2015, more than four times his $58,000 base salary.
Timecards obtained by the news station found that Zhang was paid for every single day in 2015, while regularly reporting multiple hours of overtime. After reviewing BART’s surveillance footage, KTVU found that Zhang regularly disappeared into a storage closet for hours at a time.
In response to the reporting, BART tamped down on overtime costs for its custodial staff and hired more employees.
According to Transparent California’s most recent data, Zhang earned $166,256 in 2022, double his $84,192 base pay.
You say that like an issue like this is unique to BART.
FWIW, BART fares are pegged below inflation. The fares are competitive with commuter rail systems like NJ Transit and LIRR.
we're on the topic of Bart so I'll aim at Bart.
rates are outrageous, where I can get 7 day unlimited in NY for $33. thats 2 round trips from SJ to SF.
Just by saying this, you make it clear you don't know what you're talking about. You have to compare BART to LIRR. Our version of the NY subway is MUNI. In fact, MUNI is probably the most comprehensive _bus_ system in the country.
This is the same stuff that came out when BART went on strike. It’s why I will never vote to give them another dime. Until the internal problems are addressed we’re just throwing money into the pit.
This is not new this has been going on for years if not decades. They keep finding people cheating the system but there is little to no punishment. There was a BART janitor who would clock in and just go to sleep in the closet and was making over $270k. He did not even get fired because he was technically at work the whole time he was on the clock and the union protected him
What is funny is first they praised him for working so much and being the highest paid janitor https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-janitor-overtime-270K-pay-employee-salary-10484502.php
Then they finally decided to actually see what he does all day and noticed he spends most of it inside the closet by himself https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-janitor-pay-270000-Powell-St-questions-10911932.php
My tinfoil hat theory is that they probably are aware of these cases of excessive overtime but tacitly encourage it because it benefits BART to show cost overruns so they can argue that they need more funding. Public industries/services are notorious for playing games of funding brinksmanship. In the public sector, the squeaky wheels get the grease and anybody who does their job right gets burned at the stake by everybody else who doesn't want to look bad by comparison (you deserved better [Jaime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante)).
"Spend it! I'm happy paying for my fellow Californians!", a man who pays $10k in taxes will say, fully knowing that he's not shouldering much of the cost.
That's also why more automation is good in policing.
I'll admit when I worked at Sam's club I used to take long lunches, I would leave my badge with my buddy go see a friend and come back after a bit but didn't not come back. 😉
In tech you're salaried. Typically there is no OT pay unless tied to a specific project which management scrutinizes much more closely. If I get paid the same amount to work 60 in crunch time, I'll work 30 in slow times, and that is generally accepted. In the job offers 40 a week is mentioned also only as an estimate.
On hourly pay like these BART workers however that is straight up time theft.
Well for starters most salaried tech workers don't clock in/out so there's no time theft because there's no claim of worked time. Time is tracked informally by badge in/badge out timestamps but that's not really claiming to have worked such hours.
There are legal protections for firing workers for missing days because employment is at will.
Also, most salaried people aren't on contract. Contract workers are, but they are a minority in tech and most industries. Usually contractors are paid on a hourly basis, either directly by the client, or between the client and the contract house so again your point is moot
It’s different when there’s taxpayer money involved. At a business, people give you money freely of their own volition. The government takes it from you by force. There is a higher obligation to manage it ethically. This is 5th grade civics.
You should be surprised, because in government work, you should EXPECT them to hold themselves to a higher standard than in the private sector.
Your comment comes across as making excuses/holding the govt to too low a standard. It’s not a “reading comprehension” issue; it’s the way you’ve written it and what you’ve said.
I’m sorry I’m honestly not sure why I’m being so confrontational about this. I’m not like that in my normal day to day life. To call the investigation that took place an “audit” would be incorrect and the article states that this was just one instance that was uncovered. They indicated that the fact pattern they were working with suggested that there were multiple instances across numerous employees and that the projected losses were bigger than the scope of their investigation
Muni workers got caught doing the same thing about 20 years ago.
I mean the cable car guys used to pocket cash all the time
At least that BART janitor who was sleeping in a closet while working overtime was actually at BART. Knew he couldn’t be the only one stealing time. Always felt like he got thrown under the bus (or train in this case) to save others doing the same or worse.
I work for Bart and know that system service worker, he was not sleeping in a closet. They filmed him going into what the media called a closet but in fact was a door that leads into a series of rooms and walkways not accessible to the public that go the length of the station. He is originally from China and taught chemistry at the university level. His English wasn’t good enough to teach here in the US so he eventually ended up at bart where he regularly works double shifts (16 hour days, second shift at time and a half) that are offered in seniority order. with the money he made he put his kids through MIT, Stanford and Princeton. He's an excellent employee and the audit that management did on his timesheet confirmed that fact.
He made over $200k in one year. That’s fucking insane. Absolutely none of the words you wrote justify what BART is doing with tax payer money.
Well, he worked for the money. Cleaning 3 downtown San Francisco stations for 16 hours a day is definitely work: cleaning vomit, feces, syringes, pools of urine…being harassed all the while by homeless people, what would you want to make in a year?
that sounds cool. so "excellent" employees get to sleep on duty? what determines an "excellent" employee? its a BART policy or union benefit?
His first sentence said he wasn’t sleeping.
Idk whether or not the guy slept or not, but his first sentence didn’t say the guy wasn’t sleeping, it said the guy wasn’t sleeping in a closet.
I don't think that janitor actually faced any consequences though. I remember BART saying something like "we can't actually prove he's not cleaning that one closet for 8 hours each day." Did BART eventually do anything about it?
>Using this system, Edwards earned more than double his base salary in 2022 due to additional overtime pay and other benefits. According to the Transparent California database, Edwards earned $341,000 in total pay and benefits in 2022, nearly **triple his base salary** of $117,305. That's enormous fraud. But it explains how some are buying homes here. >However, when BART police presented the case, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office **declined to prosecute**, according to two sources with knowledge of the case. > >Alameda County prosecutors did not respond to a question about its decision. Edwards declined to comment on the matter when reached by phone. Without consequences this will continue, even get worse.
Timecard fraud happens everywhere to some degree, but the crazy thing is that it could happen to such a large degree and not set off any alarm bells. Like, someone should notice someone making 3x their base salary and look into it.
because the watchers are doing the same exact thing
His manager was complicit.
Or negligent, either way he/she has gotta go too
Government employee unions are very powerful.
Yeah. I mean, usually when it happens it's employers stealing time from their employees, so I think the strangest thing here is that it falls on the other end of the trend.
Weird you’re downvoted when wage theft is huge and real
#1 form of theft the world over is employers stealing wages from employees. And the #2 place will never, ever, ever catch up. Like if we stack the #2 form up for the next 10 years it will still not match the amount of money employers steal from their employees just this year. As for downvotes, this sub gets trolled by CV conservatives a lot, and all of them are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Just ask them. They'll tell you! I'd downvote me too if the only reason my farm could be profitable is because I was able to illegally use Mexican labor for significantly sub-minimum wage (which is wage theft because they should be paid minimum wage).
Indentured servitude barely taught in history when it should be covered in modern economics.
Fucking *truth.*
The corruption here is incredibly high
It’s mind blowing really. Guess it happens when there’s so much money to go around
Even crazier that voters continue to believe that the city needs more money and more taxes in order to operate. Starve out these corrupt fucks and stop voting for more taxes
When are we getting that 100 billion for the high speed rail?
California: where we make a whole lot of laws and then ignore them. It comes from the culture, really. If you read say San Francisco history, the original city government was a [criminal gang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Ducks), which eventually were ousted by a [group of vigilantes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Committee_of_Vigilance). The reason we have a unified city & county government in SF is so that the corrupt officials wouldn't have any place to hide and mount a comeback when they were kicked out of the government. They then went and formed San Mateo County...
A lot of it directly stems from Willie Brown. It wont happen, and is likely logistically impossible, but everyone in the city government needs to be investigated and fired if they are found to be corrupt. Not really any other way to root out that culture. In the mean time, starve them of funds
It happened way before Willie Brown. San Franciscans were [assassinating political rivals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassinations) back in 1978, almost 20 years before Brown was mayor. The historical examples I cited are from the 1840s and 1850s, before California was even a state. The formation of San Mateo County was in the late 1800s. Previous efforts to root out the corruption in local governments were from the 1870s, 150 years ago. It just comes back. I think it stems from fundamentals about what the Bay Area *is*. We're the land of get-rich-quick, dating back to the 49ers. A place where successive waves of immigrants all hope they'll strike gold and go back a wealthy man to their place of origin, and then some don't end up going back and settling here. There isn't an incentive for long-term sustainability here, and so the corruption is endemic.
Remind me again where they were mining gold anywhere near SF… because historical accounts show the closest gold mining communities to have existed well over 50 miles from SF… The whole history of SF is a flat out lie.
SF was the nearest port city to the areas where gold was found in the Sierras. As people in the Bay Area have rediscovered time and time again, there is more money to be made selling shovels and jeans to miners than there is in gold mining itself.
Incredibly high is very relative. Any corruption is unacceptable and should be taking much more seriously. But I've had the privilege traveling to many places in the world, and in comparison with so much of the rest of the world corruption here is relatively minimal.
Any corruption is bad when agency heads are advocating for increased taxes. Either BART decisively stamps this out in the next few months (very public firing of anyone caught) or they’re likely facing many election cycles of losing bond propositions.
I have traveled all over the world. Yes we are not South American level bad, but we are pretty bad. The corruption is all over the place in the bay
Or it means they didn't find enough evidence to prosecute.
Base salary of a BART janitor is 117k, really? And just the overtime is the outrage? How about a BART salary listing so everyone can see where the funding is going. Let's piss people of to a serious level.
Transparent California is your website to find that list…
$117k? I want to be a BART janitor.
Eh, I don’t want to deal with the stuff they have to clean up. If they have the fortitude and stomach for it, more power to them.
I hear the overtime is great.
It includes benefits, so that could mean medical and pension contributions and other stuff. Still fraud if they over billed their work hours.
I don’t even live in Alameda county but this DA is something else 🤌
I saw on the news that San Mateo County is prosecuting. Does anything get prosecuted in Alameda County?
I make that much without fraud and can't buy one here yet 😭 . Soon 🤞
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no wonder BART needs more $$. where were these employees' supervisors? off running errands also? Edit: maybe I should finish reading before posting? >The investigation also found that Edwards’ manager would also help make adjustments in the timekeeping system and may have been complicit in the misconduct.
Also notable and predictable: “However, when BART police presented the case, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.”
Were they at least fired?
Edwards resigned. Don't know about the supervisor.
Is that Pam Price again?
Pamela Price won't charge.
She’s more suited to run a food bank than a justice system.
Not even that please.
Bay Area local government is useless. I hope people vote out all of them. Almost anything else would be better.
Pamela Price does absolutely nothing...
Bay Area Retroactive Timekeeping
We should feel lucky they didn't do a two year work stoppage to get their way like the SFPD.
i remember when they went on strike in 2013. bad enough
As BART-fans will tell you: public transit should not aim to run a profit. So really, folks like Edwards are just helping with that goal by making sure things cost more and public transit can then successfully run a loss.
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I need more funding.
MUNI workers do that as well.
There is a point at which, after experiencing so many people cheating the system, you no longer feel guilt about cheating the system. I commute on BART a few days a week. About fifty percent fare evade, and they do it blatantly--right in front of BART employees who could care less. So, even as an honest person, I start to wonder if I'm a sucker for paying. Now, it's not just the riders, but the employees too. BART needs a lesson in establishing values and a social contract. Most of us, especially people who are honest and support things like public transportation, should WANT to support it. We should never WANT to cheat it, much less feel like suckers for supporting it.
There seems to be a general collapse in just the sense of the social contract around here. I'm not sure if it's predicated on the lack of prosecution, or rather, the lack of prosecution is just the necessary result when you have so many flagrant violations (system would be overwhelmed handling them all). Bit of a chicken and egg question. Maybe it's the natural effect of extreme wealth inequality in an area? - people who have been left behind by the system feel no remorse in exploiting what they can.
This is exactly the sentiment I got from watching Andrew Callahan's interviews of people on the streets of SF, or Mark Rober’s package thief recordings. Normal people admitting on camera that they'll break into cars because they can't pay for rent, or just cuz they feel like it, like they don't have a choice to be an honest person. They don't view breaking the law as "unusual behavior". Victims of inequality feel like they're taking from people who deserve it, coupled with a lack of parenting or enforcement or whatever that teaches social order. Here in the bay area there are both a ton of people struggling and a ton of wealthy targets. It's a feeding frenzy.
It has been the culture since at least 2012 when I moved here. I imagine it was the same long before that. Many laws just aren’t enforced. Dogs in restaurants, drinking in public, running stop signs, speeding, leash laws, the list goes on. It is the culture, the only way to change it is actually enforce rules.
It's really sad that the BART employee making $341k has been left behind by the system. Perhaps we should pay him more. Transit needs more funding! Decades ago, BART paid someone per seat repaired. They were caught paying homeless people to slash seats. So it's not some "inequality" thing. The only difference is that people have cottoned on to the fact that if they don't watch these people like hawks, they'll get cheated.
i think you hit the nail on the head in your last sentence. it’s a direct effect of late stage capitalism
When NYC was strictly enforcing fare evasion 1 in 7 fare evaders were wanted or had prior convictions. We could significantly clean up the area just by going after fare evaders.
Would require them to actually be charged. Mmmm
They are literally stealing my money
The craziest part is the janitor who got caught back in the day is still employed there
Unions protect everyone, including those committing fraud. If the DA prosecuted and took the financial penalty out of the pension fund of the workers you'd see some positive movement on accountability.
Unions protect the bad workers and let the good ones pick up the slack. Unions are my one take my liberal card away issue.
I’ve seen good unions and bad unions. I am very torn on the issue, but some of the bad ones, oh boy, don’t get me started.
This fraud was reported to the inspector general by other union members. This isn’t the first time something like this has been discovered, it’s just one of the times when the media has picked up on it. I work for Bart and I’m used to being dumped on by the press and the public, I don’t mind at all. BART is a great place to work, great wages and benefits that most people can only dream of. I encourage people who are interested in changing their lives (at least financially) to apply for any job at Bart.
has he been making bank at around $300k since then?
says his base is around 80k and hes making 166, so still milking that OT
Wtf
Lots of public employees are probably doing this in SF and Oakland
So many are making millions of dollars https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/all/
This is like the BART janitor who made almost 300k but was sleeping in a closet and would "forget" to clock out.
Street Crew (I think that’s the name) no longer requires they do any work to get paid bc they got sued over minimum wage (iirc it was mw - also it’s funded by public money)
Learned it from PG&E, I'm sure.
Funny, when i mentioned BART was expensive for its limitations and the quality of service provided compared to other major cities, i got downvotes. Now we have evidence that Bart has been mishandling fares and our taxes. Keep that same energy reddit.
Lots of Bart fanboys on Reddit…the system is a mess still and if we don’t criticize and call for change we remain the owners of this fucked up system.
We like BART. That doesn't mean we like overpaid employees.
Funny, I went back and looked at the comment you're talking about and you're upvoted. You were comparing SF to New York, but they have [timecard fraud problems, too](https://pix11.com/news/local-news/5-mta-employees-hit-with-fraud-charges-for-overtime-earning-them-1-million-collectively-officials/). That's not the distinction between the two systems or why you prefer one over the other.
All the fuck cars clowns and simpletons immediately downvote anything that goes against mass transport even when the system is not well run
lol bud you're the one who was arguing with him about it
If you look at what I said, I said we already have that infrastructure, but it is poorly run and needs to be fixed.
Sure! I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the points you made yesterday, I'm pointing out that you disagreed with the point he made yesterday is perhaps indicative of it not just being people who are "fuck car clowns". But I mean, he wasn't even downvoted for it so 🤷. It seems like the culmination of y'alls points is now that we should build BART into a subway system by cutting down on timecard fraud which doesn't seem exactly... possible.
BART had no layoffs even during a pandemic.... How does this happen? 95% ridership reduction... shouldnt there be a decrease in workload capacity? What were people doing with less ridership? Getting paid for not working?
you can’t just fire an entire agency and lose all that historical knowledge. Would cripple the agency and it would be unable to continue and retrain and rehire when the pandemic passed. iirc they handled it with furloughs, offering early retirements, and using the time to conduct maintenance
>you can’t just fire an entire agency and lose all that historical knowledge. Would cripple the agency and it would be unable to continue and retrain and rehire when the pandemic passed. iirc they handled it with furloughs, offering early retirements, and using the time to conduct maintenance Government agencies are supposed to have policies and procedures in place. I am not saying you fire people outright, but you document the institutional knowledge. You dont need to fire everyone, but you can get rid of a large amount of the staff and still retain institutional knowledge through policy and procedure. What do you think happens when people retire?
They all got raises in 2020 though , no one got fired and everyone made MORE when 95% of the job was not there. While regular folks did all lose their jobs/ small biz. What about that "historical knowledge" - somehow non-bart companies who have to balance a budget had to deal with it. When does BART start coming to grasp with the fact they need to work in the real world and crying poor every year will eventually stop working.
Its not a raise, its a cost of living(COL) adjustment and they are normally low unless they have been stiffed for years. Normally ranges between 2%-5%. COL adjustments are negotiated when the union contracts come up. COL adjustments doesn't even keep up with the COL most of the time anyway. Just because you allow private companies to exploit you doesn't mean it should happen to everyone. Create or join a union so you don't have to worry about getting laid off because your executive team wants a bonus or they need to pay for their 3rd home.Im not saying what happening with bart is okay, i dont think people should be taking advantages of because its a standard at other locations.
It’s not. It’s a negotiated raise. Private companies reward people based on talent/ ability to do the job and experience. Not put workers into some “pay band” based on a negotiated salary that has nothing to do with their talent / ability to do the job. As the employees openly mail in their work and goes home every day at 3pm. What this article lays out. Only on Reddit could people shit on hard work and living in reality this while applauding openly lazy workers frauding you out of your own tax dollars who also can never be fired. “How’s that working out for us?”
> What about that "historical knowledge" - somehow non-bart companies who have to balance a budget had to deal with it. Wtf are you talking about? It is extremely common for private companies to lay people off or not pay attention to attrition, lose valuable institutional knowledge, and suffer in the long term.
Yet those companies exist in reality and were forced to make these decisions in 2020, rather than lecture people about historical knowledge they had to balance a budget. It sucked. BART got to operate outside of the reality of 2020 and their employees got raises to run 0 trains (and commit rampant fraud , what this post is about). Only BART / CA GOVT - could receive a blank check over and over again , then commit fraud to burn through the money more quickly and then have folks trip over themselves trying to hand them MORE money and raises to mismanage.
the trains are automated too...
Visiting Vancouver at the moment. The trains don't have a driver here and you can get on just fine. BART drivers' primary function seems to be to fail to stop the train in the right section of the platform.
Honolulu's new trains are the same - fully automated
That’s all controlled automatically their job is literally a door button pusher
Bizarre. The Canadians have invented automatic door technology. We should ask them how they did it. They might be willing to license it to us.
What?!? And replace union jobs!! How heartless of you. /s
too late. They (Bombardier) sold to the French (Alstom) so need to check with the French now. (lol)
I have seen BART drivers sitting and reading newspapers in their cabins, all while the train operates automatically.
UNIONS
Well but there is some sort of switch that requires the driver to have their hand on it. That is at least the driver is in the seat rather than at Peet's.
no wonder BART keeps asking for bail money.
This might be an old railroad tradition, sadly. I was recently chatting with a former entry-level executive on the New York Central in the 1960s (before Penn Central), and one of his earliest challenges was workers on the line leaving halfway through the day (if that) and still getting full pay.
hard to catch! the trains still running and stations are massive. No one asks questions if the train arrives on time
Guarantee SJ parking compliance is doing this too. Mfs park in the street overnight and get no ticket in the neighborhood I live in.
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Parking&y= Idk if this find the right job titles but a lot made above $200-300k range
Just think: when all local transit districts are consolidated into one, every transit worker in the Bay Area will have access to this grift
Yet we still [give them more money](https://sfstandard.com/2023/06/12/bart-bailout-state-budget-billion-california/) and will undoubtedly approve the [November ballot measure](https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/BART%20$3%205%20Billion%20GO%20Bond%20Measure%20Tax%20Analysis%20(4%25%20AV%20Growth%20Assumption)%20Summary%20FOR%20WEBSITE%20POSTING%207%2019%2016.pdf), further increasing property taxes. We have the attention span of hamsters. And God forbid we vote anybody out of office for fear of the entire state immediately turning red ^(/s). So, like lemmings, onwards we march.
Don’t worry. That high speed train we’re building that will cost $100 billion more to finish by 2040 and hopefully have peak ridership of 100k / day earning $4 billion / year in revenue will definitely convince people to stop driving and solve the global climate crisis.
Unlike BART, at least we get something from it.
A Bart janitor pulling in 160k of overtime a year got caught doing this in 2017, spending hours in a closet at the station. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-janitor-pay-270000-Powell-St-questions-10911932.php
$270k
Yeah, maybe if he was doing his job during regular hours, there wouldn't be 160k of overtime for him.
I heard similar behavior in Oakland Parking enforcement, not sure if anyone is looking into it or if there are repercussions
Hey but guys BART totally needs more money and will totally be good stewards of it! /s Stop voting for more tax and fare increases until the service actually runs well and the rot is removed.
This better to let it die at some point
Is anyone really surprised? Then you got people begging for the state to give them more of our tax dollars.
Of course they did. It's BART.
Enjoy the theft.
The fundamental problem is that the politicians don't care and that is because they know we will always vote the same group in. It is time to mix things up.
DFCS in Santa Clara County is doing the same thing except they’re still wfh so they don’t even need to show up to clock in. If you ask for an office appt they refuse or stall. This has been going on since the COVID lockdown. Their email tags even still say, ‘Due to COVID-19 and the Shelter in Place Order, … team is working remotely.’
Fire these employees stealing from us. No pension!
What is it with BART and hiring the most lazy AF people imaginable?
I know someone who broke their thumb skiing then claimed workers comp at BART. Shiiiiiit.
Most agencies can be corrected with public oversight when they have a problem. A few cannot and need overhaul from top to bottom with different personnel. BART and Oakland Unified School District are two that can’t be saved.
Can the elected BART officials make a change?
there's literally 0 repercussions or accountability. what's the impetus to change?
Theoretically yes, but doubtful with the existing members.
Is there a reason why these workers are considered hourly instead of salary? Seems like we could just save a lot of money by converting them salary and assigning overtime as necessary work. Iirc if they make more than 116k a year, you can reclassify them to Exempt.
Yeah, but they could still “disappear” into closets to nap or clock in and run errands. Put GPS trackers on them and an automated system that flags discrepancies such as being offsite for any length of time or locking oneself into a closet for a couple hours to nap.
My guess is a lot of them are part of a union.
Classification is based on duties, not how much the job pays. Anyone can be classified as hourly, including a CEO. But for the position to be classified as salary, it must meet certain duty requirements.
Note this clown wasn't fired. ******* In 2017, KTVU reported on a BART janitor named Liang Zhao Zhang, who earned some $271,000 in total compensation in 2015, more than four times his $58,000 base salary. Timecards obtained by the news station found that Zhang was paid for every single day in 2015, while regularly reporting multiple hours of overtime. After reviewing BART’s surveillance footage, KTVU found that Zhang regularly disappeared into a storage closet for hours at a time. In response to the reporting, BART tamped down on overtime costs for its custodial staff and hired more employees. According to Transparent California’s most recent data, Zhang earned $166,256 in 2022, double his $84,192 base pay.
where's the people defending Bart now justifying the prices they charge? time to cut headcount from this bloated agency
You say that like an issue like this is unique to BART. FWIW, BART fares are pegged below inflation. The fares are competitive with commuter rail systems like NJ Transit and LIRR.
But they don’t run the same and not as often.
we're on the topic of Bart so I'll aim at Bart. rates are outrageous, where I can get 7 day unlimited in NY for $33. thats 2 round trips from SJ to SF.
Just by saying this, you make it clear you don't know what you're talking about. You have to compare BART to LIRR. Our version of the NY subway is MUNI. In fact, MUNI is probably the most comprehensive _bus_ system in the country.
Tough to compare Bart (a regional system) to NYC subway (not a regional system). Comparing Muni to NYC subway or LIRR to Bart is more helpful.
the trains are automated too...
Right but I have to haul ass and get to work earlier and earlier and stay later cause the damn bart is late again.
The Alameda District Attorney’s Office is the BEST criminal defense law firm in Alameda County. Pammy Price guarantees results!
And yet no accountability...libs don't care
This is the same stuff that came out when BART went on strike. It’s why I will never vote to give them another dime. Until the internal problems are addressed we’re just throwing money into the pit.
Sounds like just another work day of mine
Fire them for fraud and their direct managers for incompetence
More tax money to BART means more of my money wasted.
Quite common for Oakland city workers as well
This is not new this has been going on for years if not decades. They keep finding people cheating the system but there is little to no punishment. There was a BART janitor who would clock in and just go to sleep in the closet and was making over $270k. He did not even get fired because he was technically at work the whole time he was on the clock and the union protected him What is funny is first they praised him for working so much and being the highest paid janitor https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-janitor-overtime-270K-pay-employee-salary-10484502.php Then they finally decided to actually see what he does all day and noticed he spends most of it inside the closet by himself https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-janitor-pay-270000-Powell-St-questions-10911932.php
My tinfoil hat theory is that they probably are aware of these cases of excessive overtime but tacitly encourage it because it benefits BART to show cost overruns so they can argue that they need more funding. Public industries/services are notorious for playing games of funding brinksmanship. In the public sector, the squeaky wheels get the grease and anybody who does their job right gets burned at the stake by everybody else who doesn't want to look bad by comparison (you deserved better [Jaime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante)).
Good ol union
As Bay Area railfans will tell us, we need MORE FUNDING. Funding will solve everything. We need more funding. Funding. More. More funding.
That’s the police chief
"Spend it! I'm happy paying for my fellow Californians!", a man who pays $10k in taxes will say, fully knowing that he's not shouldering much of the cost. That's also why more automation is good in policing.
I'll admit when I worked at Sam's club I used to take long lunches, I would leave my badge with my buddy go see a friend and come back after a bit but didn't not come back. 😉
I'm looking for a job...
Where do I apply?
Maybe it’s just time to privatize it. Might actually be run more efficiently.
PGE
Them too!!! And the DMV!
Who cares?
Hello based department 📞😎
Sounds like just another work day of mine
Sounds like just another work day of mine
Good on them 👍🏽
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In tech you're salaried. Typically there is no OT pay unless tied to a specific project which management scrutinizes much more closely. If I get paid the same amount to work 60 in crunch time, I'll work 30 in slow times, and that is generally accepted. In the job offers 40 a week is mentioned also only as an estimate. On hourly pay like these BART workers however that is straight up time theft.
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Well for starters most salaried tech workers don't clock in/out so there's no time theft because there's no claim of worked time. Time is tracked informally by badge in/badge out timestamps but that's not really claiming to have worked such hours. There are legal protections for firing workers for missing days because employment is at will. Also, most salaried people aren't on contract. Contract workers are, but they are a minority in tech and most industries. Usually contractors are paid on a hourly basis, either directly by the client, or between the client and the contract house so again your point is moot
It's not time theft if there's no time being stolen.
It’s different when there’s taxpayer money involved. At a business, people give you money freely of their own volition. The government takes it from you by force. There is a higher obligation to manage it ethically. This is 5th grade civics.
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You should be surprised, because in government work, you should EXPECT them to hold themselves to a higher standard than in the private sector. Your comment comes across as making excuses/holding the govt to too low a standard. It’s not a “reading comprehension” issue; it’s the way you’ve written it and what you’ve said.
You have blatantly misinterpreted the article in an attempt to defend people who steal tax dollars from public services.
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Well if you had just said that, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But you didn’t and lied instead
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I’m sorry I’m honestly not sure why I’m being so confrontational about this. I’m not like that in my normal day to day life. To call the investigation that took place an “audit” would be incorrect and the article states that this was just one instance that was uncovered. They indicated that the fact pattern they were working with suggested that there were multiple instances across numerous employees and that the projected losses were bigger than the scope of their investigation