What road workers were doing when the city spied on them in 2012: report

The city workers whose firing was contested — and, in some cases, overturned this week — like their coffee. Some have other preferences, too, like using the washroom at their own house rather than a public one while on duty and taking extended lunch breaks in the sun.

In ruling that 15 of the fired public works employees should be rehired with probation, arbitrator Lorne Slotnick found that the city was partially responsible for facilitating a lax "culture of low expectations." 

I need my espresso. Without that I have no life.- One  re-hired city worker

​Slotnick's report says the workers "are not angels, but neither are they criminals." They were trusted to use their days productively repairing roads to improve the safety of Hamiltonians, he said, and instead they "breached that trust by taking long breaks, by extending their lunch periods, and by spending time travelling to locations that were unnecessary and out of the way."

But the city had an "attitude of indifference," Slotnick wrote, and no evidence was presented that any of the workers were ever told they weren't doing enough work.

The report — which CBC Hamilton obtained before its official release Monday — paints a detailed picture of what workers were up to during their workdays in 2012, when the city was using GPS and video surveillance to track 29 employees suspected of time theft. 

Oh, the places they went. Details from the arbitrator's report include:

'Cheap cappuccino'

Public works employees on the day shift for asphalt crews have to start at 7 a.m. So it's not surprising they make a morning coffee stop en route to pick up asphalt or between filling potholes. But the definition of on-the-way seemed to be pretty loose, according to anecdotes and accounts included in the arbitrator's report.

One team of four workers in two trucks, called Crew #2 in the report, made an eight-minute morning stop at the Italian-Canadian Social Club to take advantage of their "cheap cappuccino — a buck," according to comments by one worker included the arbitrator's report. Then they stopped at Grandad's Donuts for a few minutes. They did about 19 minutes of road work on two different sites, then stopped at a city yard for 30 minutes.

The rest of the day included stops at Tim Hortons and a grocery store for sandwiches, as well as a few more stops for road work: 53 minutes, 25 minutes and 21 minutes.

That same worker said he was "patrolling" for potholes and road fixes on the way to Starbucks, which was out of the district he was assigned to that day. "I like that coffee shop," he said. The trucks split up and one drove 13 minutes to Starbucks for 20 minutes, while the other went back to the Italian club, where it stopped for 23 minutes.

Another day he was working, on Crew #5, included stops at Tim Hortons, another Tim Hortons, a Country Style coffee shop in Stoney Creek, and a 25-minute drive across town to the Starbucks on Locke Street.

In another worker's case, he sits in the truck when his coworkers pop in to McDonald's or Tim Horton's. He has no interest in those places, "just espresso." 

"I need my espresso," said that worker. "Without that I have no life."

Lunch in the sun and a stop at home

"Employees cannot legitimately travel 15 minutes to a favoured spot, spend 15 minutes there, then travel 15 minutes back to a work site, and then claim that they had only a 15-minute break," the arbitrator wrote.

But this belief seemed pervasive from the details included. The workers are supposed to receive a 20-minute lunch break, but many took double or triple that long, sometimes not including stops to pick up food to begin with. 

Crew #3 stopped at a plaza with a Subway for about eight minutes at 12:05 p.m. one day, then drove for about 20 minutes to stop near Springer's Meats west of Stoney Creek, the report states. Then they drove to Confederation Park and parked there for 39 minutes, til 1:24 p.m. Then they drove for about an hour, stopping several times at a Tim Hortons they'd already visited that day, another Tim Hortons and other locations not picked up by the city's surveillance, before returning to work. 

One of the workers interviewed said the stop at the park was to have lunch in the sun before another worker on the team would start night shift the following week.

A third worker, a member of three of the crews observed, admitted he stops at home to use his own washroom due to an aversion to public washrooms. 

Stops at the bank and the brew-mart

Here are some other personal errands mentioned in the arbitrator's report: 

• A stop at one worker's ex-wife's house
• A stop at Shoppers to pick up a prescription for another worker's mom, then a delivery to her home
• An in-person stop at the dentist to reschedule an appointment
• Stops at the bank
• Stop at a store to look at snow tires
• A stop at Complete Home Brewing Supplies for one worker to "pick up an ingredient used to sterilize his wine-making equipment." The stop was legitimate, said the worker: "It was fast, like getting cigarettes or pop."
• A 23-minute stop at Highland Meats

So what happened to the workers mentioned above? 

The misconduct of the second one mentioned warrants "only a serious suspension" and he should be rehired on probation and given back pay. The wine-making worker's "unrepentant approach" means he should not be rehired.
The first one mentioned and the bathroom worker are to be be rehired with no back pay.

The arbitrator called for managers and supervisors to exercise more intensive supervision and accountability for workers, and ruled that the measure of firing the workers had been applied too abruptly.