Is your building a Union or Non-Union Building? How many employees does your building employ? If they are union employees, how long have they been members of the union? The reason I ask is that a union building would have a set number of vacation days for each employee, those vacation periods are required to be covered by relief employees. The union contract gives the option to relieve vactioning employees at a set hourly wage (60% of what the employee being replaced earns). The Board should be aware of this and take advantage of the ability to relieve vacationing employees at this discounted rate. If your building has several employees and they have been in the union over 5 years they may be entitled to 3 weeks paid vacation each. You can see how a building with 6 employees, all working union members for over 5 years, could result in a total of 18 weeks vacation. Members with 10 and 15 years are entitled to even more vacation time. If this applies to your building you should probably look into how the vacationing employees are being covered while on vacation. If it turns out that the vacationing employees are being covered by the other regular union employees working in the building, then your building may in fact be paying them overtime for the additional days worked during the absence of the other workers. This is definitely not good practice and would ultimately result in an enormous amount of overtime at the end of the year. Without any details it would be hard to pinpoint the exact nature of your overtime issue. Hope this helps.

We are union with 6 employees (super, handyman, 4 doormen, 1 new "relief.")
The 18 weeks of 'vacation' time is $853.63 per week or $21.34 per hour.
The Super has been here les than 15 years but takes 26 vacation days.
I think he also charges overtime regularly -( sneaks it in for an hour a week or so.)
Overtime is not clearly stated on our budget break-down - but it is in there somewhere.

The management company should be able to give you a break down on all employees and what it is costing to run your operation. I manage a property in Manhattan and submit payroll each week to management (noting any overtime, vacation etc). If management/board have a question I have the payroll sheets and an answer ready to explain/justify. You can also get an instant readout of employees costs by purchasing software programs which you can hook up to an employee time clock etc. This allows you to track costs very easily. It is really just a matter of staying on top of things and being accountable in the end. Best of luck and hope it was of some help.

Managment was unable to answer the owvertiem quesion at last yr's annual meeting so you can see in our case this may not work so well......

My question now is - What is this $21.34 per hour - Who's wage?

anyhow here is info from 32BJ:

b. A person hired solely for the purpose of
relieving employees for vacation shall be paid
60% of the minimum applicable regular hourly
wage rate. Should a vacation relief employee
continue to be employed beyond five months,
such employee shall be paid the wage rate of a
80new hire or experienced person as the case may
be. I

I believe $21.34 per hour is what an employee classified as others in a Class A building gets paid per hour. You can download local 32BJ contract on the web site. As to the who and why you need an explanation from someone.
MRM

Five years ago we changed MangAgents and the Staff overtime jumped by about $30,000 -- The Agent was too lazy to keep a pool of Non-Union workers to fill in. This pool can also be kept by the Super.
If you are a Union building -- you can LEGALLY use non-union workers to fill in for overtime. They are not paid overtime-time$$$ and the Coop does not pay benifit's.
The MangAgent or Super keeps the list, and calls for emergency fill-ins or regular vacation etc...
The Super/MangAgent have no interest in Saving you money -- the Board has to demand that this pool be maintained.
Speak up or keep paying... VP

If your payroll is processed by one of the large payroll companies (ADP, Paychex, etc), your managing agent should receive a weekly report from the payroll company accounting for every paid hour charged to every employee. This includes straight time, overtime, sick time, holiday, vacation, personal, etc.

Your board should demand they be given copies of these reports on a weekly or monthly basis. If your managing agent cannot or will not provide the reports, then you have a serious problem. At best you have a sloppy managing agent. At worst you have financial shenanigans going on which you need to uncover and terminate quickly.

Here's the link to the SEIU contract covering residential buildings: http://www.seiu32bj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2010ApartmentBuildingAgreement.pdf

If your numbers are correct, I would insist on detailed explanation from your property manager. As you indicate management company was unable to explain at last annual meeting I would direct these questions to the Board Treasurer. Are you a Board member? You may also request clarification or explanation in writing to management company and or Board of directors. May be time to go to market for new Management. feel free to email me directly. Cmasino@bronsteinproperties.com