Madison’s Most Famous Bus Driver

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Have you heard about the bus driver in Madison who made $160,000 last year? Since he’s now the poster child for public sector largesse in the state of Wisconsin, it’s hard not to have heard of him. So what’s up? Greg Sargent checked into this and found that the driver, John Nelson, actually earns about $50,000 in base pay. But:

Nelson was able to earn $160,000 in 2009 not because of his annual salary, but because he worked a huge amount of overtime hours. He was able to do this because of previous rules, negotiated by Teamsters local 695, that allowed drivers with most seniority — and the highest salaries — to rack up large amounts of overtime.

….But wait, it gets better. It turns out that pointing to Nelson as an example of what’s wrong with public employee unions is thoroughly bogus in another way. According to Rusch, the city of Madison went to the bus drivers union last year and told them the rules allowing the highest-paid bus drivers to snap up the most overtime were a major problem for them. Turns out the union agreed, and renegotiated a deal to limit overtime in a way that has left Metro Transit happy. And guess what: That deal was negotiated through collective bargaining.

It’s possible that Nelson is just a guy who doesn’t have much of a social life and likes to work. And after all, if he didn’t work the overtime, someone else would. But there’s also this, from a report last year on the ongoing contract negotiations:

[City officials] declined comment on current contract negotiations, which are in binding arbitration. In May, Teamsters rank and file rejected a tentative agreement between the city and union leaders that would have changed rules that let senior drivers make tens of thousands in extra pay.

….The rules don’t always mean more net overtime costs but concentrate extra pay in fewer hands. The extra pay also lets those employees boost their state retirement income, which is based on an average of the three highest earning years.

Italics mine. The whole story, then, is a familiar one. Bus drivers in Madison aren’t, in general, living a cushy life. Starting drivers earn about $35,000 and Nelson, who’s been on the job for 36 years, earns about $50,000. There’s nothing outrageous about that.

But the rules are deliberately set up so that veteran drivers can goose their earnings for a few years at the exact time that their earnings are highest. It’s no surprise that the union rank-and-file initially voted down a proposal to reform this system, since the rank-and-file understand that eventually they’ll all have their own chance to goose their earnings just before retirement, thus providing them with a lavish pension. Only after arbitration and a lengthy public outcry did they finally accept changes to rein in this practice.

Not everyone takes advantage of the overtime rules to the extent Nelson has, but it’s nonetheless a widely used gambit to boost retirement earnings far beyond what’s fair. I don’t begrudge the bus drivers their pay or their benefits or their retirement plans, but I do begrudge them this time-honored scam for putting taxpayers on the hook for excessive pensions. Nelson isn’t a poster boy for overpaid bus drivers — that charge really is bogus — but he is a poster boy for this kind of pension abuse. It should stop.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate