DeKalb water workers clock marathon overtime

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 16½-hour day ending at midnight, then went back on the clock the next morning at 7 a.m. He then worked 20 hours, took 3½ hours off, then stayed clocked in 16½ hours on Thursday, almost 17 hours on Friday, almost 15 hours on Saturday and 7½ 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 worked 15½ hours on Saturday, then 20 hours on Sunday, then was back at work Monday morning after just 3 hours off. In September, he worked 14½ hours from Saturday evening to Sunday morning, then stayed on the clock 30 hours straight from Sunday afternoon until early Tuesday. Six and a half hours later, he clocked back in for a nearly 10-hour stretch. He then worked 16- to 16½-hour days for the rest of the week.

Years past: 64 percent boost in 2011; 77 percent boost in 2012

Larry Jackson, Crew Worker Senior

Base wages: $26,707

2013 OT earnings: $25,271

Boost: 95 percent

How he did it: On a regular basis, he put in at least 6 days per week, usually about 10 hours per day. He clocked in about 4 p.m. on New Year’s Day and stayed on almost 25 hours straight. He was clocked in every day the whole week of Christmas, for a total 79 hours. Eighteen of those hours were on Christmas Day itself and the morning after. During one week in May, he worked four 14-hour shifts in a row. In September, he clocked one day at 6:30 a.m. and stayed on until 5:30 p.m. the next day.

Years past: None in 2011; 102 percent in 2012

Source: Time sheets and compensation records provided by DeKalb County. While DePeazer spoke briefly to the AJC about his hours, James, Rivers and Jackson declined to comment through a county spokesman.

Interim CEO: No plans to cut out overtime

No other core metro Atlanta county pays out overtime to the extent of DeKalb, which slashed its workforce with hundreds of employee buyouts in 2010. Across all departments, DeKalb paid more than $11 million last year.

By comparison, Gwinnett paid $6.9 million in overtime, Fulton paid $4.4 million, Cobb paid $3.6 million and Clayton paid $3.1 million, according to pay records provided by each jurisdiction.

Almost a third of DeKalb’s overtime — $3.2 million — went to Watershed Management workers. County leaders say that’s cheaper than hiring more workers to plug those extra hours, which they say would cost about $3.6 million once benefits are factored in.

“We are instituting a number of process improvements in Watershed Management, and certainly better control of overtime is one of those improvements,”said Interim CEO Lee May, who declined an interview request but issued a written statement. “Having said that, there are no plans to reduce overtime entirely. Overtime is an effective cost management tool to control labor costs.”

Interim CEO: No plans to cut out overtime

No other core metro Atlanta county pays out overtime to the extent of DeKalb, which slashed its workforce with hundreds of employee buyouts in 2010. Across all departments, DeKalb paid more than $11 million last year.

By comparison, Gwinnett paid $6.9 million in overtime, Fulton paid $4.4 million, Cobb paid $3.6 million and Clayton paid $3.1 million, according to pay records provided by each jurisdiction.

Almost a third of DeKalb’s overtime — $3.2 million — went to Watershed Management workers. County leaders say that’s cheaper than hiring more workers to plug those extra hours, which they say would cost about $3.6 million once benefits are factored in.

“We are instituting a number of process improvements in Watershed Management,” Interim CEO Lee May said in a written statement, “and certainly better control of overtime is one of those improvements. Having said that, there are no plans to reduce overtime entirely. Overtime is an effective cost management tool to control labor costs.”

Think your work days are long? Try pulling the hours clocked by DeKalb County’s 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 night’s sleep, an analysis of overtime records by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.

They operate heavy equipment, drive heavy trucks and deal in mud and asphalt. Yet they’ve 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. They’re putting workers and the public at risk for accidents. What’s more, the county is paying excessive costs for frazzled employees who aren’t as productive.

“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 county’s 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.

“The work did not get reduced in the field,” said Charles Lambert, Watershed Management’s 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, Watershed’s director acknowledged the county shouldn’t 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.

“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 they’re running a 24/7 operation, and long hours go with the job.

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 Control’s 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 one’s judgment as bad as being intoxicated, research has shown.

That’s 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 can’t be on the road after 11 straight hours of driving or 14 straight hours of working.

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 it’s unconscionable to have people working that way,” said Spence, who heads Douglas Claims & Risk Consultants in West Palm Beach. “What happens if this person who’s responding to a water main break gets into an auto accident because he dozes off while he’s riding to respond to that call?”

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 base pay.

“If we are working that set of people that much, then they will have fatigue,” Macrina said. “I’m concerned about injury, and I’m also concerned that they’re burning out.”

Lambert said DeKalb depends on supervisors to call for replacement workers, if someone is struggling with fatigue.

“We’re always concerned for their safety,” Lambert said. “But it’s not an individual out there. It’s a crew out there.”

But he also said that relief crews are hard to come by and a repair job can’t be abandoned midway when customers are waiting for water.

Superhuman work hours

In several cases the AJC examined, records of extreme overtime hours line up with water system catastrophes.

In September 2013, when a water main break snarled traffic on Clairmont Road for days, three men put in stints of 20 to 33 consecutive hours. One was paid for working 20 hours until 3:30 a.m., took 3½ hours off, then went back on the clock until midnight. Another worked 30 hours, took a 6½-hour break, then put in another shift of almost 10 hours.

This past February, during the “Son of SnowJam” storm when pipes were busting all over the county, five men whose records the AJC examined worked around the clock for days, banking 57 to 63 consecutive hours.

“We have to respond,” Lambert said. “If we don’t respond, we get sanctioned by the state, the feds, or both.”

Watershed managers initially said workers can’t sleep on the clock. But when questioned later about the winter storm hours, they said the department made an exception, keeping several employees on hand for emergencies and giving them beds and food.

Catastrophes aside, much of the overtime apparently reflects the daily grind. The department averages about 150 service requests per day. Time sheets for a number of top earners show extraordinary hours year-round.

One crew supervisor worked no ultra-marathon shifts but boosted his pay by 84 percent by regularly working six days per week with 10-, 14- and 16-hour days. He also worked every holiday, Thanksgiving and Christmas included.

Lambert said workers raising families on low wages count on the extra money and often volunteer for extra shifts.

Nine Watershed employees upped their pay last year by 80 to 98 percent. Four with base pay in the $30,000s and $40,000s took home wages in the $70,000s and $80,000s — on par with assistant solicitors and public defenders.

One was former crew supervisor Huburne DePeazer. He earned nearly $72,000 last year, an 87 percent boost. The year before, extra hours increased his pay 77 percent.

“The reason why I have to work those kinds of hours,” he said, “is because I haven’t had a raise in over six, seven years, and I have responsibility as far as sending my kids to college, taking my wife on vacation, being home on the weekends, planting a garden, walking my dog, having some me time.”

But not all of the overtime is voluntary, he pointed out.

“Somebody can get 24, 48 hours because he ain’t got no relief,” DePeazer said. “You can’t just pack the truck up and load the tractor up and leave the job. You’d be terminated. You’d be responsible for somebody getting hurt. You can’t 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 didn't 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 department's 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 foremen’s reports verify that they’re 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 to the kind in police patrol cars, that track where they are and what they’re doing and move them on and off jobs faster, Watershed director Chansler said.

But the department’s safeguards aren’t 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 the mother 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 day’s foreman’s 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 don’t know how that happened. I can’t recall that,” he said. “That’s 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.

After the AJC pointed out DePeazer’s records to county officials, Chansler said there’s “no foolproof way” to be sure all hours are legitimate.

“People can do things that you don’t know about,” he said. “We don’t 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 17½-hour shift, then, after a 5½-hour break, worked 12½ hours, County Commissioner Kathie Gannon said, “That’s humanly impossible, don’t you think?

“They’re either sleeping at work or that’s a lot of Red Bull,” she said.

Reeling in the waste

DeKalb’s 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-year span.

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, he’s 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.

“That’s what we’re 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.

“That’s the real question,” she said. “After they’ve put in a 17-hour day, what are we getting for that time and a half?”