Does Trimet really pay out more in benefits than wages?

But she also pointed out that "fringe benefits" includes a number of different categories: medical coverage, disability payments, workers comp and unemployment, time off and some others.
It’s unlikely the average person would consider payouts to workers comp and unemployment coverage to be benefits in the traditional sense. They’re not the sort of thing you negotiate before taking a job -- they’re the cost of being an employer.
 Mary King, a professor of economics at Portland State University, said lumping those sorts of costs in with this discussion may be misleading. "I think it's really a huge red herring to start talking about what TriMet might be paying for past employees," she said. "That's an attempt to make it look like they're paying a lot."
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