Didn't We Already Think Of That?: The Proposed SF Overtime Ordinance

Constant Readers,

Lest you think I don't read your comments and take them seriously, today's post was inspired by a comment left on Wednesday's Bored of Supervisors roundup. At Tuesday's meeting, Supervisor McGoldrick announced plans to propose a law to limit the amount of overtime worked by City employees.  One reader, SFCitizen, linked to a 2004 article from the Chronicle about the amount of overtime charged by police officers. Here's an excerpt:

[Supervisor] Sandoval said the solution to runaway overtime is to limit the amount any employee can work, thus thwarting those who have learned how to manipulate the system to drive up their hours. There already is a law -- administrative code 18.13-1 -- that forbids city employees from exceeding 16 percent of their regular hours. But police, firefighters and other emergency personnel are exempt. And for those who aren't exempt, such as institutional police, the law is simply not enforced.

"A lot of overtime is justified,'' said Harvey Rose, who manages the Budget Analyst's Office. "But much of it isn't. It just becomes a way of life.''

I was obviously intrigued. With a $171 million bill for overtime charges for FY2007 (which is $62 million more than anticipated) Mistermayor and Supervisor McGoldrick are joining up to propose a cap on those charges. And I am SO in favor of that!! But do we really need a new law if there is already one on the books?

Sure enough, San Francisco Administrative Code sec. 18.13-1(a) currently reads:

No appointing officer shall suffer or permit any employee to work overtime hours that exceed, in any fiscal year, 16 percent of the number of hours that the employee is regularly scheduled to work on a straight-time basis in that fiscal year.

Let's forget about vacation and sick leave and other forms of time off and assume a City worker is supposed to work 40 hours per week for 52 weeks of the year. That is 2080 hours. 16% of that is 332.8 hours (which is about 6.4 hours per week). Now my head hurts.   

But the current law also has a bunch of exceptions. First, "[a]n appointing officer may, by written authorization, require an employee to work overtime hours in excess of the  [16%] limitation..." Also, the 16% rule does not apply to:

1. "overtime worked by any employee where the City and County of San Francisco incurs no direct or indirect additional costs and where the employee acquires no right to compensatory time off", and
2. "work performed by members of the uniformed ranks of the Police and Fire Departments", and
3. "transit operators and transit operator supervisors of the San Francisco Municipal Railway", and
4. "nurses and other emergency workers employed by the Department of Public Health", and
5. "any other employee when the work is required pursuant to a standing directive of the appointing officer to complete a task after the end of the employee's regularly scheduled shift or to fill emergency staff shortages."

The proposed law (see bottom of post) eliminates most of the above-listed exceptions and the only two that remain are: (1) uniformed police and firefighters, and (2) "work performed in the event of an emergency or temporary critical service need upon approval by the Controller and by the Director of Human Resources (or, if appropriate, by the Director of the Municipal Transportation Agency)."

Sounds good, right? Well, the basic difference is that the unfettered discretion of the "appointing officer" is replaced by the Controller and the Director of Human Resources. With things like state mandated staffing requirements for nurses (22 CCR sec. 70217) and City mandated staffing requirements for police (SF Charter sec. 4.127) both of which are huge sources of OT charges - you can see how there will likely continue to be "temporary critical service" needs on a regular basis.    

The proposed law also maintains the 16% rule (despite the shitty reporting by news outlets everywhere saying that the 332.8 hour rule is "new") and adds a total cap of hours worked by any City employee at 80 per week. (Per state law, after working 8 hours on any day, hourly employees get overtime at 1.5 times regular pay; after 12 hours on any day, employees get double time. Cal. Lab. Code sec. 510(a).)

So, what we have is a new ordinance that simply increases the scrutiny on requests for more than 332.8 hours of OT and will (hopefully) reduce double-time earned by City employees. But I have to wonder, will the administrative costs of (a) tracking the number of hours worked by employees each week, and (b) enforcing the new and improved Admin. Code section 18.13-1(a) outweigh whatever savings which might result from this ordinance? Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any estimates on the cost-effectiveness of the proposal.

WEAKER REPORTING: Under the present law, the Board of Supervisors is supposed to get a bi-annual report "justifying any excess overtime" and the proposed law will only require a report listing employees who have worked more than 80 hours in a week.  The way the proposed ordinance is drafted, there will be no reporting on employees who work less than 80 hours in a week but more than 332.8 hours of OT in a year.

Also, under the current law, the reporting requirement applies to police, firefighters and other employees who are exempt from OT limits. The proposed law does not require OT reporting for exempt employees.

So, to recap: lower reporting standards + slightly more onerous limitations is supposed to result in fewer people gaming the system.

You don't need to work overtime to see the problem with that.

--Melissa   

Download overtime1.doc 

Comments

[Clemens]

Are there awards for bloggers like "Way Too F*cking Smart To Be Writing A Blog But Does So Anyway To Pass The Time Before She Gets Her Own TV Show"?

Because if there are awards for blogs like that, I think we have a nominee.

I mean, srsly. Lady, you're hurting everyone's brain.

[DJTennessee]

If it weren't for the Comments section of this blog, nothing would ever get done in this town.

[sfwillie]

This is a great post, and it's so depressing. It's about theft, after all.

[Advocaat van Onvermogen & Pro Deo]

I found this article by Craig Freeman, Vice President of Xerox Litigation Services, on the Big I, little t blog interesting. Titled,“ E- mail and E- discovery: A Q&A”