Friday, October 2, 2015

Deacon in Blue not happy about Trimet ripping off employees time

There is the lawsuit about this but as we all know its DELAYED.
 Trimet is the master of delays and that not only means service delays but legal delays.
 Unlimited money for unlimited motions!
 Someday it will be decided!


Evidently, people from all over the world are readers of this blog. Many of you share my occupation, so you understand when I say we're not paid enough of the hours we're actually in uniform.

When you meet your bus en route, also known as a road relief, operators here are expected to not only be on time, but to arrive early. If you take public transit to your road relief, you're expected to be two buses (or trains) ahead of your scheduled run start time. However, we're only paid pennies on the dollar for road reliefs. A couple of bucks is not proper compensation for getting there early and waiting. If your buses only run every 20 minutes, you can arrive up to 40 minutes or more prior to your road relief time. So for 20-40 minutes each day, I'm actually giving my time away.

Hey I don't expect to be paid for travel time from home to work. But if my actual "work" begins before my scheduled time and I'm not being paid for it, there's a problem. While waiting for my bus to arrive, I am asked questions at least five times a day. I'm in uniform, expected to represent the agency, but I'm not being compensated for my time. If I get relieved on the road, I should be compensated for the time it takes to get from the relief to my home garage because only then am I truly "off the clock".

Just throwing in my two cents here. But I'm curious... of you readers who hail from transit agencies around the world and in this country (USA), what is your road relief pay? What are your thoughts on compensating operators for all the time we spend in uniform but are not being paid? Please either comment under this post, or drop me a line at deaconinblue@gmail.com, or on the FaceBook post this article appears under.

Thanks and stay safe out there folks!

 From the Driver Side: Road Relief

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