Chicago government spends $90,000 per year on each of 200 employees to spend most of their “work” time sitting around doing nothing

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

… the $18 million question… why City Hall tolerates having 200 motor truck drivers “paid to do nothing” but drive crews to their work sites and wait in the vehicle until they finish.

A Teamsters Union contract that runs until June 2017 prohibits the city from transferring certain driver responsibilities to other employees, except during emergencies. Nor is the city allowed to sub-contract services in a way that would trigger driver layoffs.

Inspector General Joe Ferguson argued this week that the long-term contracts have “hamstrung” the city — and cost Chicago taxpayers $18 million-a-year for 200 truck drivers the city could do without.

I like unions when they’re doing good things, such as protecting the safety of workers in coal mines. But spending $18 million of taxpayers’ money to pay people to sit around doing nothing is not a good thing – it’s a bad thing. It’s things like this that give unions a bad name. Unions are supposed to promote good causes – not ridiculous things such as this.

Chicago winters get awfully cold. I’m certain that during the winter, those 200 drivers have their engines and heaters running all day long, as they sit there doing nothing. That can’t be good for the environment.