MA State Police Investigating Pay For Unworked Shifts

millbilly said:
So let me get this straight. You think there is a problem with public employees who have paid into medicare their whole career, reach medicare age. Then opt to continue with their health insurance at a reduced rate and pay 100% of the premium? I would like to see the numbers on this. I think you are seeing problems where they don't exist. I don't think most retirees can afford that There are cops and police that don't even take the health insurance offered. In many workplaces one would be compensated for this... and as far as how much of the premium municipalities pick up is negotiated at the local level into their labor contract. I have heard as little as 50% up to 95%.
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"Reduced rate" and "100% of premium" are oxymoronic. It's 25% of the premium (20% for some old timers). Remember, us taxpayers are paying 75% of the premium.

I am talking only pre-medicare coverage.

The fact that you don't think most retirees can afford insurance on their own is irrelevant. In the private sector, it is not what an employee "needs" or "can afford", but where the labor supply and demand curves intersect.

As someone paying the bill, I do not believe in post employment benefits other than reasonable severance in the event of a layoff. And yes, I think someone taking a "pass" on an offered health insurance benefit should be compensated. Though, when the private sector does this, the compensation is a fraction of the actual cost - just enough incentive to encourage people to use the insurance through their spouse. (Something that UPS now mandates)

There is a side effect of continued insurance - early retirements. Far fewer people would retire at 50 if they did not get insurance. This would be both good (less pensions collected) and bad (shifting the seniority/pay curve for a job upwards).
 
Yes. The tax payers are paying a predetermined percentage of the health insurance premium which was negotiated in a labor contract. And no. More fudging of the facts, with very few exeptions to the rule no one is drawing a pension before 55 or 57 at the earliest depending on what yr you started. And that means to get the maximum 80% you would have had to have started in at 23 or 25 years of age which is not often the case. Most retirements I have seen are over 60 and often times are 65 when the employee is forced to retire by law. And the 70% v 75% premium may apply to at the state level but again at the municipal level is negotiated by each local and varies from 50% to 95% from what I have seen. Every job has its pros and cons. From what I have seen from different contracts most entry level positions are at top step within 5 to 15 yrs. I definitely agree these troopers belong in jail. Its just frustrating to constantly see misinformation about public employee benefits that ruin every good dirty cop bash thread for me lol. What many ppl here have heard and believe and type on online forums just are not reality.
 
And reduced rate and 100% are not oxymoronic how I worded it. If product costs $100. And you get a special rate of $80. And you pay the $80. Then you are paying 100% of the cost.
 
millbilly said:
And reduced rate and 100% are not oxymoronic how I worded it. If product costs $100. And you get a special rate of $80. And you pay the $80. Then you are paying 100% of the cost.
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Huh? That doesn’t make any sense. I’ll help.

“If product costs $100. And you pay the $80. Then you are paying 100% of the cost.”

That’s what you wrote. That math doesn’t check out.

“And you get a special rate of $80. And you pay the $80.”

Then you are paying 100% of not the cost, but the special rate.
 
Ok let me fix this for you. If the premium was $100. And the reduced rate is $80. You are paying 100% of the premium rate offered. The town is paying 0%. But lets not let this distract from the point of which I think you guys are making. Which I think is that police and fire should not be retiring until age 67?
 
I think over time (not overtime), people have lost the understanding of what public sector jobs meant. I am an old guy, and my grandmother worked for the state of NY in the early 30s, right at the start of the depression so I got the story. Public sector jobs were that you got paid a decent wage, not a great wage, not a wage as good as the private sector, but in exchange for that, was that if you worked until retirement, you got a pension and other benefits. You also received benefits while you worked. And you had pretty good job security.

So what irks me these days is that when I see how the public sector guys really abuse the system to jack the crap out of their pensions (last 3 year average), cram in overtime (the guys at Troop F were all doing 40 hours of overtime, then complain about what they have to do. Seeing how the guy who was on disability, yet was entered into bodybuilding competitions, fought and WON his case. Crap like this. If you have 25% of the staff doing a whole work week of overtime, it's time to hire maybe 20% more staff and pay them a regular rate). These jobs clearly are not regulated by supply and demand when a tiny fraction of the people who apply get in. Supply and demand shows you are paying too much.

Just read my signature at the bottom of my posts to see what I think about the whole .gov.
 
millbilly said:
Ok let me fix this for you. If the premium was $100. And the reduced rate is $80. You are paying 100% of the premium rate offered. The town is paying 0%. But lets not let this distract from the point of which I think you guys are making. Which I think is that police and fire should not be retiring until age 67?
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65 is mandatory.
 
millbilly said:
Ok let me fix this for you. If the premium was $100. And the reduced rate is $80. You are paying 100% of the premium rate offered. The town is paying 0%. But lets not let this distract from the point of which I think you guys are making. Which I think is that police and fire should not be retiring until age 67?
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A better example is "the premium is $100, the employee rate is $25. The employee pays 100% of the reduced rate or 25% of the total rate. In either case, the taxpayers cough up $75. Saying the employee/retiree "pays for his insurance" is incomplete without mentioning that someone else (us) pays three times as much as he does towards his policy.

It is easy to play with numbers by choosing the wording. For example, when sales tax went from 5% to 6.25% was it a modest 1.25% increase or a massive 25% increase? Both are correct.
 
Boatman I unless MSP is greatly different than schedule 4 I don't think 1 penny of their overtime is factored into their pension. Its been said a million times and you still just spread bs. I don't disagree about the body builder for sure but again when you talk out your a#$ and make up things about pensions, disabilities, etc and then type it on a forum I am going to set the record straight. I agree I certainly don't deserve to earn amongst the wealthiest in my community but I think my job and other public safety workers earn approximately what nurses, licensed tradesmen, etc earn. And if there is overtime available I'm going to work some of it. It is absolutely not always cheaper to hire additional staffing to cut overall payroll and if you think that then you have no idea how this works.
 
You have me completely bamboozled with the percentages. My public safety job pays 75%. My previous private sector job payed 100%. Yes it is a huge benefit to retire at 55 and draw a pension. Yes it is a huge benefit to have 75% of my health insurance payed for until im on medicare. These were factors I considered when choosing a career.
 
I think my job and other public safety workers earn approximately what nurses
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A highly experienced nurse can make about $100K in Boston; does not get retirement medical; and may get a pension that is not as generous as public sector ones.

Four Framingham detectives made over $145K last year ; $175K is not uncommon for a state trooper; and they get more generous retirement pensions and lifetime medical (ie, the state pays 75% until Medicare age).

So, if you think $145K+retirement medical is "approximately" $100K, we use different math
These were factors I considered when choosing a career.
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This is why any change would have to done slowly over time so as to not break existing deals. There is a small amount of this in effect - when the state went from 20% to 25% contribution, existing employees were grandfathered at 20%.
 
Your "lifetime medical" is disingenuous. It is until medicare age. My point was hourly wages are comparable. If a cop pulls twice the hrs of course his pay should be significantly larger. Change is incremental over time ie employees contribute more towards their pensions, yrs needed to max pensions has recently increased, age to draw pension has increased.
 
Again a lot is subjective. I could probably earn 150k this year but it would absolutely suck and I'd have no life. Talk to your elected officials about the overtime instead of bashing the ppl that take it. In most places that overtime is getting worked voluntarily or not. And now to make your heads explode some places pay double time for involuntarily overtime. So keep bashing the guys voluntarily taking it at 1.5
 
Damn now that is a lot of money. Last thread that had that title conveniently left out the fact that the figure included a retro active pay raise for like the past 8 yrs or something like that.
 
So when they retire at age 50 with a 100% pension based off of their gross earnings they will get $352k per yr with their life insurance paid for life!? This is highway robbery! And before any of you try to correct anything I just said with factual information do not even bother because my mind is entirely made up. Abolish the MSP. Abolish local pd and fd. We can easily find volunteers to do the work adequately or ppl willing to do it for pennies on the dollar until age 67!
 
millbilly said:
Boatman I unless MSP is greatly different than schedule 4 I don't think 1 penny of their overtime is factored into their pension. Its been said a million times and you still just spread bs. I don't disagree about the body builder for sure but again when you talk out your a#$ and make up things about pensions, disabilities, etc and then type it on a forum I am going to set the record straight. I agree I certainly don't deserve to earn amongst the wealthiest in my community but I think my job and other public safety workers earn approximately what nurses, licensed tradesmen, etc earn. And if there is overtime available I'm going to work some of it. It is absolutely not always cheaper to hire additional staffing to cut overall payroll and if you think that then you have no idea how this works.
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Sorry, maybe you didn't understand me. I did not make up anything. I said that pensions were based on the last 3 years of work. Great perk, as the few companies that offer pensions now usually base it on the last 5 to 7 years and then to annuity conversion factored by # of years worked (just google ibm pension for example). I am talking about abuses of the system. Then let's talk about perks in MA that other state PD would die for. Quinn bill. Seriously, getting a 20% bonus on top of your pay because you got a bachelors in CJ? Police details at 1.5x for 4 hour mins to flag traffic on suburban streets? This goes on and on.

I am not a cop basher. My uncle was a LT for the Brooklyn PD. My best friends daughter is a city beat cop. But when I had to pay an extra few hundred bucks to have a police detail to take down a tree close to the street I am bit peeved, especially when I spend time in other states and see a regular guy who works for the utility company doing the job just as well. I also don't lump the FD and PD as the same. I think the PD has abused the system way more than the FD.

BTW, pretty sure all of Long Island is done with volunteer Fire. That's a few million people in densely populated suburbs. These guys do get pensions, but no pay. I am not saying that is the way to go, I am not sure how it is done, but somehow it works pretty well there.
 
millbilly said:
Damn now that is a lot of money. Last thread that had that title conveniently left out the fact that the figure included a retro active pay raise for like the past 8 yrs or something like that.
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300g check is a 300g check. The wages in the dreaded private sector have stagnated for at least a decade or two, but there is no way to correct that because public service isn't free market, there is a line to get on that 300g gravy train that's a mile long, but hard to get ahead of that line unless you are a minority.

Again, make those jobs truly free market driven and you would not believe how many people would sign up to risk their beauty sleep for half the pay. But if we still run into shortage of willing bodies, I'm sure it's nothing that HB1 visa program could not fix, it works so well for the private sector, shit, I bet we can get the cost of .gov cut down on order of magnitude with the same number of warm bodies.
 
Again, make those jobs truly free market driven and you would not believe how many people would sign up to risk their beauty sleep for half the pay.
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This here sums it up nicely,

Ever notice how states like Florida and Texas advertise for police recruits? As a general rule, if you never have to advertise for applicants, and can even charge applicants a testing fee, you are overpaying for the job.

Our leaders have done a great job for those who serve the public, and a very poor job negotiating on behalf of those who pay. I doubt they would invest in a private sector company that had a similar level of labor negotiating skills.
 
SKumar said:
“She’s (Col. Kerry Gilpin) working on a whole series of reforms that I think are exactly what the doctor ordered,” Baker said yesterday.

Uhh, how about getting the money back, firing them, apologizing to the taxpayers, and THEN reforms?
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They can't, they are all complicit.
ALL public government is corrupt, ALL OF IT. It's simply the depth of corruption that varies. These stories are merely the tip of the iceberg.
Gilpin knows full well that a "full" investigation means they ALL go down. It's why on a national level the US AG can't appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary, Fusion GPS and the like because they are ALL involved in it.
The swamp sucks in everyone, even in Massachusetts.
 
I said that pensions were based on the last 3 years of work.
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A big abuse is school districts that have a "Lexington Clause" in the teacher contract. A teacher chooses one career year for a $5K boost in pay. This is almost universally done in the 3 year prior to retirement for the obvious reason.
 
8 year retroactive pay raise, dafuq?!?? Did I read that right? That is the problem with public unions right there.
 

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