The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [97]
Many uniformed employees receive special holiday pay, even when they don’t work holidays. Commissioner Russo, an outspoken opponent of bloated benefits, complains: “An inordinate number of policemen do office work. A patrolman works from a chart, which defines the number of days he works and the number of days he’s off. In addition to his salary, every year he is paid for 11 holidays—let’s say $80 a day, or $880 a year—whether he works the holiday or not. The guys in the office rarely work holidays because they’re not on a chart. Yet they still get extra holiday pay for 11 holidays. Thus they get paid twice for the holiday.” The Koch administration calculates that taxpayers could save $10 million a year if this benefit went only to those who actually worked holidays. They also claim that holiday pay adds 4 percent to the salary of uniformed employees.
The city provides uniform allowances to those in 190 different job titles, including many who don’t wear uniforms. In 1976, more than 93,000 employees received allowances of from $25 to $265. Detectives, for instance, don’t wear uniforms—yet they receive annual uniform allowances of $265. Koch claimed that $700,000 a year is distributed to workers who don’t wear uniforms.
Transit employees receive special “birthday pay.”
Through a special arrangement, city maintenance workers receive the same prevailing wage as skilled construction workers. “If we employ a carpenter, even though he’s doing maintenance, not construction, we have to pay prevailing construction wages,” says Russo. Mayor Beame’s Management Advisory Board recommended that this practice be terminated (Beame ignored this recommendation, as he did others). Russo says a change would allow the city to pay 25 to 40 percent less for new maintenance workers.
Sanitation men receive “out of town” work allowances for working in town. Translated: A sanitation worker receives 4 hours’ extra pay, at time-and-a-half rates, if he is asked to work outside his normal sanitation district—even if asked to work in the same borough.
Sanitation men are paid overtime for 2 of the hours worked on Saturdays, though Saturday is a regular workday for many. They are also the only city employees paid double-time rates for Sunday work.
City employees who work nights are paid a special night-differential rate. This is standard in private industry. What’s different is that the city defines days as nights for certain employees. For most city workers, “night” begins at 6 P.M. For transit workers, it also begins at 6 P.M., in the middle of rush hour, when they receive 10 percent more. For police and corrections workers, “night” begins at 4 P.M. For sanitation men, it can begin as early as 3 P.M. Commissioner Russo in 1977 estimated that if “night” were standardized at 6 P.M., the city would save at least $150 per uniformed worker a year.
The city also provides for pay differentials based on assignments or educational degrees. In addition to shift differentials, these cover workers in 44 city agencies and are budgeted at $53 million in fiscal 1979.
Free lunches are granted certain city employees. Corrections workers, who are not permitted to journey outside, receive free lunches. The city pays half the cost of meals for municipal hospital workers and those employed at Social Services Department institutions.
EXCESSIVE BENEFITS cost a considerable amount of money. But they generate, or represent, attitudes that may cost even more: that one is in public service not to serve but to grab as much as possible; that a government job is a right, not a privilege; that one’s benefits are paid by “the city,” not the taxpayers. Me replaces we—me too, me wants, me demands, it doesn’t concern me.
We don’t always see it because our attention focuses on how government looks rather than how it works. Because management is a cold abstraction, and the people who run government are too often judged by how well they