Drop Dead Fred
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- Jun 6, 2020
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This is time card fraud, and the government is forcing taxpayers to pay for all of it
Clocked in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week: How staffing bills for Chicago's migrant shelters swelled with overtime
Clocked in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week: How staffing bills for Chicago’s migrant shelters swelled with overtime
By Joe Mahr, Nell Salzman, Alice Yin and Dan Petrella
October 24, 2023
CHICAGO — When a security guard clocked out of a Streeterville migrant shelter one Friday in March, he’d just logged his 84th hour at work that week.
His bosses told the city it was at least his 56th day in a row working a 12-hour shift, according to invoices they filed with the city — invoices whose sizable overtime helped contribute to tens of millions in city payments to the firm staffing the city’s migrant shelters.
The security guard was employed by Favorite Healthcare Staffing, a national employment firm that has become the city’s biggest contractor to handle the growing migrant crisis. Under the deal, the city hired the firm to provide case workers, security guards, janitors and many other employees for the migrant shelters — at initial base rates ranging from $60 to $150 an hour.
Invoices reviewed by the Chicago Tribune show that hundreds of Favorite Staffing workers logged 84-hour workweeks — with the overtime, paid at a 50% premium, helping balloon bills that topped at least $56 million. At a Woodlawn shelter in early February, for example, two-thirds of the 50 staffers logged working at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week. At the Streeterville site one week in March, roughly 8 in 10 workers logged the same hours.
Clocked in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week: How staffing bills for Chicago's migrant shelters swelled with overtime
Clocked in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week: How staffing bills for Chicago’s migrant shelters swelled with overtime
By Joe Mahr, Nell Salzman, Alice Yin and Dan Petrella
October 24, 2023
CHICAGO — When a security guard clocked out of a Streeterville migrant shelter one Friday in March, he’d just logged his 84th hour at work that week.
His bosses told the city it was at least his 56th day in a row working a 12-hour shift, according to invoices they filed with the city — invoices whose sizable overtime helped contribute to tens of millions in city payments to the firm staffing the city’s migrant shelters.
The security guard was employed by Favorite Healthcare Staffing, a national employment firm that has become the city’s biggest contractor to handle the growing migrant crisis. Under the deal, the city hired the firm to provide case workers, security guards, janitors and many other employees for the migrant shelters — at initial base rates ranging from $60 to $150 an hour.
Invoices reviewed by the Chicago Tribune show that hundreds of Favorite Staffing workers logged 84-hour workweeks — with the overtime, paid at a 50% premium, helping balloon bills that topped at least $56 million. At a Woodlawn shelter in early February, for example, two-thirds of the 50 staffers logged working at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week. At the Streeterville site one week in March, roughly 8 in 10 workers logged the same hours.
