(The Seattle Times posted the following story by Mike Lindblom on its website on December 25.)
SEATTLE — Workers who helped the Sounder commuter trains run on time in 2003 are grouchy because their performance bonuses have been derailed.
The incentive bonuses were suspended after some union officials and employees complained that not everyone was included in the payouts.
Many employees at the Sodo train yard — including electricians, mechanics, machinists and cleaners — were paid the bonuses last Friday.
That same day, the payments were suddenly rescinded by Amtrak. In some cases, bonus-fat paychecks that were banked via direct deposit were yanked from the employees’ personal checking accounts and replaced with leaner paychecks.
It’s unclear exactly how the bonuses were rescinded for workers who did not have their checks directly deposited.
Amtrak provides services to the commuter line owned by Sound Transit, which provides three round-trip Sounder trains each weekday between Tacoma and Seattle. An extension to Everett started this week.
An Amtrak official said the situation is under review.
But according to some employees, Amtrak had withheld bonuses from some workers because of absenteeism or other issues, prompting complaints from unionized workers.
“They put some restrictions on it where some people would get left out of the bonus for some pretty minor stuff,” said Michael Giansante, a national negotiator for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
After initially paying the bonuses Friday, Amtrak retracted money from between 90 and 120 employees the same day, said a veteran mechanic. He declined to be named, but furnished bank statements for himself and two co-workers, as well as memos from an Amtrak financial specialist to two employees.
The bank statements showed “reversals” of between $300 and $400 each for the three workers.
Several details could not be confirmed yesterday because officials were gone for the holidays. The situation is being handled through Amtrak headquarters in Washington, D.C., said Jeff Duncan, assistant superintendent for maintenance in Seattle.
Duncan said some managers’ bonuses also were revoked.
“There is an upper-management committee reviewing the situation. That’s where it stands,” he said.
The bonus money comes indirectly from Sound Transit, which pays Amtrak $80,000 a month to maintain the Sounder trains, which are driven by Burlington Northern Santa Fe engineers, said transit spokesman Lee Somerstein.
The contract allows some of the maintenance money to be spent as employee incentive pay at Amtrak’s discretion, he said.
The union’s Giansante, who is based in Pennsylvania, said that between 30 and 35 electricians in Seattle were among the workers expecting a bonus.
The electricians, earning about $20 an hour, are working under an expired contract and have gone four years without cost-of-living raises, he said.
Giansante said the national IBEW office and Amtrak’s labor-relations people didn’t get word of the dispute until just before the holiday week, and there have been no high-level talks yet.
“Hopefully, we can work this out,” he said, so that everyone who contributed to Sounder’s success gets a bonus.