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DeKalb water workers clock marathon overtime
Long hours raise safety, cost concernsUpdated: 6:00 p.m. Friday, Nov. 28, 2014 | Posted: 12:00 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014
By Johnny Edwards- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Think your work days are long? Try pulling the hours clocked by DeKalb Countys top overtime
earners.
A handful of pipe crew workers and supervisors in the water department nearly doubled their pay
last year by logging marathon hours at time-and-a-half rates. Their time sheets show back-to-back
shifts 17 hours, 20 hours, 30 hours at a stretch with gaps in between that hardly leave time for a
decent nights sleep, an analysis of overtime records by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.
+ JOHN SPINK / AJC
A DeKalb County Watershed crew repairs a ruptured water main that shut down heavily-traveled Clairmont Road and
left several hundred residents ... Read More
They operate heavy equipment, drive heavy trucks and deal in mud and asphalt. Yet theyve
sometimes gone weeks upon weeks without a day off, pulling some of their longest hours on
weekends and holidays.
A crew supervisor worked 111 hours one week, then 59 hours the next, records show. Another man
worked every holiday last year and once worked 32 days in a row. Another worker averaged 65 hours
per week, with never a vacation day.
Safety experts say that if the employees are truly working such hours, managers are being recklessly
irresponsible. Theyre putting workers and the public at risk for accidents. Whats more, the county is
paying excessive costs for frazzled employees who arent as productive.
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+ BOB ANDRES
A DeKalb County Watershed crew digs up a portion of Covington Highway as they worked to fix the broken main in ...
Read More
Those are brutal schedules, National Safety Council president and CEO Deborah Hersman said.
Most of us, we work in a job that, when we get tired, the spellcheck will correct any of our mistakes.
But they work in jobs where if they make a mistake it could result in death or injury.
Others question the accuracy of time cards in a department that has been plagued by corruption.
Atlanta labor law attorney Gary Kessler said DeKalb officials should be held accountable for not
reeling in grossly padded hours. Nobody works those hours. It defies common sense, Kessler
said.
Water department managers insist the long hours are real. They are the consequence, they say, of an
aging pipe system incessantly springing leaks, winter storms that make pipe problems worse, and the
countys elected leaders slashing a quarter of their operations workforce as a cost-cutting measure
four years ago, part of a countywide reduction in force. DeKalb is under federal mandate to make
hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs to its system, and that includes speedily responding to pipe
bursts and sewage leaks.
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+
DeKalb County Watershed Management employees use time clocks with fingerprint scans to punch in and out ofwork. The county started ... Read More
The work did not get reduced in the field, said Charles Lambert, Watershed Managements
assistant director over operations. My staff got reduced.
Watershed has never asked the County Commission to approve more positions, though. Lambert
said the 2010 edict ended the discussion, and paying overtime is cheaper than hiring new workers to
cover those hours. But he also said the department is perpetually short-handed, struggling with high
turnover and a limited pool of applications because pay is low yet the jobs require specialized
qualifications.
Whatever the cause, Watersheds director acknowledged the county shouldnt have men and women
working to the bone. We do not like for people to work weeks without a day off, Director James
Chansler said.
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Antonio James, a senior crew worker for DeKalb County Watershed, nearly doubled his pay last year through
overtime. That topped his ... Read More
I intend for that to be changed, he said, citing an ongoing contract with an outside consultant to
improve department efficiency.
Exhausted behind the wheel?
Watershed managers say theyre running a 24/7 operation, and long hours go with the job.
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Through overtime, Eric Rivers, a crew supervisor CDL, got an 84% boost in pay last year. He regularly worked six
days ... Read More
But studies have linked long shifts and overtime with increased injuries, weight gain, alcohol abuse
and a nose dive in productivity, according to the Centers for Disease Controls National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health.
Sleep-deprived workers also tend to make more mistakes. Going more than 17 hours without sleep
can impair ones judgment as bad as being intoxicated, research has shown.
Thats among the reasons that federal regulations limit work hours for airline pilots, locomotive
engineers and nuclear power plant workers, among other occupations. Commercial truck drivers
who cross state lines cant be on the road after 11 straight hours of driving or 14 straight hours of
working.
+
Huburne DePeazer, who was a crew supervisor CDL for DeKalb County Watershed, got an 87% boost in pay through
overtime. One ... Read More
Watershed supervisors drive commercial-sized trucks and operate backhoes and bulldozers that turn
earth around gas lines, but there are no limits on work hours for public utility workers.
So long as DeKalb County pays its hourly workers time and a half for anything above 40 hours in a
week, even brutally long hours are legal. However, Margaret Spence, a Florida-based human
resources consultant, said an argument could be made in a complaint to the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration that extraordinary work hours create a hazardous work environment.
I just think that its unconscionable to have people working that way, said Spence, who heads
Douglas Claims & Risk Consultants in West Palm Beach. What happens if this person whos
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responding to a water main break gets into an auto accident because he dozes off while hes riding to
respond to that call?
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Overtime boosted last years pay for senior crew worker Larry Jackson by 95%. He regularly put in at least six days ...
Read More
The prospect of accidents, as well as swelling costs, prompted Atlanta Watershed Commissioner Jo
Ann Marcina this year to rearrange weekend shifts to try to reduce overtime. She said she was
alarmed to find that about 100 pipe crew workers overtime averaged 50 percent above their basepay.
If we are working that set of people that much, then they will have fatigue, Macrina said. Im
concerned about injury, and Im also concerned that theyre burning out.
Lambert said DeKalb depends on supervisors to call for replacement workers, if someone is
struggling with fatigue.
burne DePeazer's time card
ere in the world was Huburne DePeazer
Kalb Watershed workers' timecards
Were always concerned for their safety, Lambert said. But its not an individual out there. Its a
crew out there.
But he also said that relief crews are hard to come by and a repair job cant be abandoned midway
when customers are waiting for water.
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Somebody can get 24, 48 hours because he aint got no relief, DePeazer said. You cant just pack
the truck up and load the tractor up and leave the job. Youd be terminated. Youd be responsible for
somebody getting hurt. You cant leave the citizens without water.
System can be abused
At first, department managers told the AJC that no employee was being paid for hours they didnt
work, even though a time fraud scandal rocked the department just two years ago. Three Watershed
employees were accused of falsifying overtime records and splitting the extra pay with the
departments lead payroll administrator, who was charged with racketeering.
Another Watershed worker exposed the scheme, alerting DeKalb County Police.
As a new safeguard, employees now must scan their fingerprints to clock in and out, and foremens
reports verify that theyre on the job with their crews throughout their shifts, Lambert said.
The department last year also started equipping water crew trucks with computer systems, similar tothe kind in police patrol cars, that track where they are and what theyre doing and move them on
and off jobs faster, Watershed director Chansler said.
But the departments safeguards arent airtight, the AJC found.
Court records show that on two occasions earlier this year, DePeazer was at the DeKalb County
courthouse filing and receiving court papers at the same times that water department records reflect
he was working at job sites miles away.
On Jan. 31, he was recorded as working until about 10:30 a.m. at department headquarters, then
working at a job site in Stone Mountain the next two hours. Yet he filed a paternity case against themother of two of his children at the Decatur courthouse around 11 a.m.
Then on March 19, when he was clocked in, he was back at the courthouse picking up papers at 11:30
a.m. That days foremans report says he was in Chamblee at the time, and after a half-hour lunch
break around noon, he was at a job site in Tucker.
DePeazer was foreman both days.
When the AJC tried to question him about the discrepancies, DePeazer said he was at work and too
busy to talk.
I dont know how that happened. I cant recall that, he said. Thats all I got to say.
The county fired him in September after he went on an unpaid leave of absence for urgent family
business, but the department discovered he was working as a MARTA bus driver, personnel records
show. His first day with MARTA was July 28, the day after he worked his last shift for DeKalb.
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After the AJC pointed out DePeazers records to county officials, Chansler said theres no foolproof
way to be sure all hours are legitimate.
People can do things that you dont know about, he said. We dont have a bodyguard watching
them all the time.
Upon seeing records of another man who worked a nearly 25-hour overnight shift, followed by a
17-hour shift, then, after a 5-hour break, worked 12 hours, County Commissioner Kathie
Gannon said, Thats humanly impossible, dont you think?
Theyre either sleeping at work or thats a lot of Red Bull, she said.
Reeling in the waste
DeKalbs water department has been a focus of controversy for years. The system is currently
undergoing $1.35 billion in upgrades about $700 million of which the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency mandated after more than 800 raw sewage spills were reported in a five-yearspan.
To help pay for the work, the county raised billing rates 16 percent in 2011, then imposed 11 percent
hikes each year since. Meanwhile, a special purpose grand jury report found the department mired in
corruption as the money flowed through, including allegations of bribery, bid rigging and contract
padding.
Its investigation led to corruption charges against suspended CEO Burrell Ellis, whose criminal case
sputtered into a mistrial last month.
Chansler was brought on in September 2013, soon after the special grand jury report went public.With help from outside consultant Veolia Water, hes been trying to fix internal problems and
improve efficiency.
The company, hired in a $3.4 million contract earlier this year, is reviewing operations, including
overtime. The contract aims to save $8 million per year.
Thats what were trying for, is a more efficient work force, Chansler said. I would invite you to
come back a year from now, after our process improvements.
Gannon, the county commissioner, said Watershed needs limits on how many days and hours a
person can work consecutively.
Thats the real question, she said. After theyve put in a 17-hour day, what are we getting for that
time and a half?
Data specialist Sean Sposito contributed to this article.
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DeKalbs top OT earners: How they did it
In 2013, nine Watershed Management workers boosted their pay by 80 percent or more through
overtime. Meet some of the highest earners:
Antonio James, Crew Worker Senior
Base Wages: $36,225
OT earnings: $34,807
Boost: 96 percent
How he did it: He worked every holiday, and after working Labor Day, he worked another 31 days
straight. Other times he put in 20, 19 and 18 consecutive days. During the stretch after Labor Day, he
put in a 16-hour day ending at midnight, then went back on the clock the next morning at 7 a.m.
He then worked 20 hours, took 3 hours off, then stayed clocked in 16 hours on Thursday, almost
17 hours on Friday, almost 15 hours on Saturday and 7 hours on Sunday. He then worked every
day through the next two weekends.
Years past: 80 percent boost in 2011; 70 percent boost in 2012.
Eric Rivers, Crew Supervisor CDL
Base wages: $45,151
2013 OT earnings: $38,064
Boost: 84 percent
How he did it: Unlike some others, his accumulation of overtime hours was steady, without the
marathon shifts. He regularly worked six days per week with 10-, 14- and 16-hour days, and
sometimes he worked straight through the weekend. He also worked every holiday.
Years past: In 2011, Rivers earned the most overtime any DeKalb employee: $49,704 a 110 percent
boost. 87 percent boost in 2012.
Huburne DePeazer, Crew Supervisor CDL (fired in September)
Base wages: $38,348
2013 OT earnings: $33,365
Boost: 87 percent
How he did it: He repeatedly put in ultra-long hours, took minimal breaks and went weeks at a time
without days off. In January, he worked 13 consecutive days, putting in 111 hours one week then 59
hours the week after. In July, starting on a Sunday morning, he worked 18 hours, until 2 a.m. After
just 5 hours off, he came back Monday morning for a nearly 12-hour stretch. The next weekend, he
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