PHL Rampers Fired and Arrested Soon?

GoldenRam94

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May 16, 2007
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Front page story on Philly.com

US Airways investigating bag handlersBy Tom Belden
Inquirer Staff Writer
US Airways has fired more than a dozen baggage handlers and is interviewing as many as 150 others at Philadelphia International Airport in connection with an alleged scheme to manipulate the records of the hours they worked, the airline said yesterday.
Some employees allegedly obtained the computer passwords of managers and used them to get access to the airline's computerized timekeeping system, where they altered records to make it appear they worked overtime when they had not, US Airways Group Inc. spokeswoman Andrea Rader said. The airline uses a timekeeping system called Workbrain.

US Airways, the airport's largest carrier, with more than 60 percent of the traffic, may seek criminal charges against some of the employees involved, Rader said.

"We're in the process of interviewing 100 to 150 people," she said. "We fired, at this point, about 15. It's primarily a case of stolen passwords."

The airline has not determined how much money it may have paid employees who did not work the hours the Workbrain system said they did, Rader said.

The Inquirer learned of the company investigation from other ramp workers, who say they were not involved but requested anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to reporters.

US Airways' Philadelphia ramp operations, where bags are loaded and airplanes serviced between flights, have been a trouble spot for years, characterized by poor labor-management relations and a tense atmosphere between older workers and new hires.

The airline has hired hundreds of baggage handlers in the last year to keep up with increases in passengers and a high attrition rate among ramp workers. Starting pay for the airline's baggage handlers is less than $10 an hour.

Rader said US Airways had 1,664 ramp workers in Philadelphia. It had hired more workers last spring than it thought it would need to deal with attrition.

The airline's Philadelphia managers say they believe that even if 100 or more employees are dismissed, baggage service will not be seriously affected, she said.

Rader said the alleged manipulation of the timekeeping system apparently started in May but did not raise suspicions until July, when company officials noticed large amounts of overtime being posted for certain employees.

Employees were allegedly able to override the system by intentionally locking themselves out of it, then using a manager's password that had been "hijacked," Rader said.

"That process has been fixed," Rader said. "Clearly, in this case, our system for having passwords reset wasn't followed. We don't know how that happened."

It was unclear how long US Airways has used the Workbrain system, also now known as Infor. Workbrain Corp. was recently acquired by Infor Global Solutions, of Alpharetta, Ga.

Richard S. Golaszeski, executive vice president of GRA Inc., a Jenkintown aviation-consulting firm, said time-card fraud probably occurs in many industries, but it is something that managers are trained to monitor.

The amount of overtime worked "is a number managers are evaluated on and are absolutely supposed to watch," Golaszeski said. "This raises questions about internal controls" at the airline.

US Airways had the worst record among major U.S. airlines for lost or damaged bags for the first six months of 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The airline's mishandled-bag reports averaged 9 per 1,000 passengers in the first half of the year, compared with an industry average of 7.3 per 1,000.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline reported a second-quarter profit of $263 million on $3.2 billion in revenue. It has been among the most profitable carriers in its industry since it came out of federal bankruptcy protection and merged with America West Airlines in September 2005.



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Contact staff writer Tom Belden at 215-854-2454 or [email protected].
 
Well, there's another 100-150 positions that they won't be able to fill....... Have no fear, as there is a large selection of local thugs that they can begin to screen for the interview process. Maybe if a thousand or so come forward, they will be able to "Weed out" 25-50 that will possibly stay with the company. :huh:
 
Just a few comments from me:

---If the ramp agents did what the company says they did, it illustrates intelligence and cleverness on their part, and a lack thereof amongst PHL management.

---If the investigation is ongoing, it seems inappropriate to comment to the press until it is complete.

---Any loss of agents in PHL will definitely affect operations. To say otherwise is foolish.

---Not knowing what is going on at your station(s) clearly shows ineptitude. Which leads to a question: Who in management gets the axe for failing to address this situation right away?
 
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---Not knowing what is going on at your station(s) clearly shows ineptitude. Which leads to a question: Who in management gets the axe for failing to address this situation right away?

According to the article this has not been going on that long. Alhough I was told of a similar scheme that was going on about 18 months ago that involved falsification of time cards concerning Overtime.
 
If it started in May, that means at least two and possibly three months have elapsed since it started. I think that's kind of a long period not to notice something irregular, unless of course no one was paying attention to how much labor was being paid versus the scheduled and overtime hours.

That indicates to me that someone who was supposed to be paying attention was preoccupied with something else. Maybe a ball of yarn or a golf game or a vacation or something. We may never know.
 
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If it started in May, that means at least two and possibly three months have elapsed since it started. I think that's kind of a long period not to notice something irregular, unless of course no one was paying attention to how much labor was being paid versus the scheduled and overtime hours.

That indicates to me that someone who was supposed to be paying attention was preoccupied with something else. Maybe a ball of yarn or a golf game or a vacation or something. We may never know.


3 months may seem like a long time but most auditing in the corporate world is done quarterly, so it would seem that management is actually dead on with this timing.
 
Perhaps the fact that the timecards are done electronically might have something to do with your suggestion that such auditing might be done quarterly. Paper cards are easier to track for fraud on a daily basis, but I would assume that a daily report can be generated by Workbrain and compared to the schedule and the actual attendance of employees. The point I'm making here is that it is obvious that someone wasn't responsible enough to check daily, let alone monthly, against projected labor needs and budgeted hours.
 
Ah, the "Philly Phactor"... Stories of massive time card shenanigans were common back in day before workbrain, with its biometric swipe in and swipe out. Supposedly, after the Workbrain readers were installed in PHL, one of the expensive units was torn off the wall and wound up in a cargo bin.

Silly of the managers not changer their passwords!

BTW, how is the mgmt TDY team in PHL doing?
 
When I was at Texaco, allowing someone else to have your computer password was a termination offense--and it didn't matter whether you gave it to them or they read it on the piece of masking tape you put on the underside of the top drawer. :lol: Computer security, especially at an airline in this day and age, is critical.

Let's see how many managers lose their jobs for allowing their passwords to become known. My guess is..........NONE?

(I wonder what was their first clue? 1,000 man-hours of overtime on a day that 3,000 bags misconnected?)
 
You know, it was pretty easy to sign in and out of SABRE, as well as changing your password as necessary. SHARES seems to be a static password, and a nightmare to sign in and out of when you're working at a terminal. And yet we still have employees who stay signed in when they are not present. It's good to trust that your coworkers at your station will not abuse your computer when you are signed in and not around, but it's not a smart thing to do in this day and age PERIOD. Anyone with a clue can potentially cause you a great deal of distress if they manage to book themselves on a nice Envoy class trip around the world for free on your die sign.

And I think you're right, Jim. No one will get canned for the PHL screwup. No one in management, that is.
 
Imagine if they had applied that ingenuity to expeditiously getting weight and balance info to departing flights.

Then again, I've made thousands of dollars in overtime myself, sitting on the taxiway waiting for those numbers. With three engines running.
 
Imagine if they had applied that ingenuity to expeditiously getting weight and balance info to departing flights.

Then again, I've made thousands of dollars in overtime myself, sitting on the taxiway waiting for those numbers. With three engines running.

Ah, but if you pushed on time, those thousands of dollars don't matter, do they? :lol:
 
Only on this board will you find people siding with thieves instead of the guys catching them. Moral corruption has spread to your mental cavity if you don't think this it's a good thing to catch and dispose of these kind of people. You say it doesn't affect me? yea only when they start on going though your crew bag you might change your tune. Fire and prosecute and look for more from the bottom to the top.
 
Everyone is blaming the company for these guys doing this? A corporate audit will take time to complete so that when you go after the perpetrators, you have all of your legal worked out first. I imagine Corporate Security got involved. These guys were tracked for a while before they pounced on them, much like police surveillance before they make their arrest on crime rings. PHL is broken in many ways and dishonest employees have no room to further complicate matters.
 

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