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Bus drivers deserve to earn a good wage for the work they do in our city. But the pay that some drivers are taking home, inflated by hundreds of hours of overtime, is simply too rich for Madison to afford.
But it's not just the overtime pay that's outrageous, the future pension payouts will likely come back to bite us all in the behind. I'm not entirely sure how pensions operate in this state, but I have learned that they are based off of an employee's top three earning years. With over a $100,000 in overtime, some of those bus drivers' top earning years are now twice their base pay, and this means the bus drivers will be drawing twice as much pension (every year) as originally budgeted. Now I can't fault the individual bus drivers who are working their tails off to make a ton of money. They are playing by the flawed rules outlined in their contract. But as a younger working adult, I envy them. I don't have a pension lined up(and as a cartoonist I never expected one), but if I were to become a bus driver I would have serious doubts about my likelihood of drawing a pension when I reach retirement age in 30 or so years. My brother works for the Chicago Transit Authority, and is paying more into the pension fund every year to help pay for retirees benefits, but has serious doubts if he will ever see a pension when he retires.
In Madison, we need to revise the flawed contract our bus drivers are operating under. We need a contract that is fair to both young and old bus drivers, and the taxpayers of Madison.
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