I was recently reading an article on NYC’s Operation Atlas (the NYPD’s anti-terror efforts) in which the author takes a few shots at the admin. for the high cost of overtime pay for the officers working in Atlas, which is really just a continuation of a longstanding policy of rewarding seniority/making up for low wages with OT.
Now, obviously time-and-a-half pay costs more than regular pay. But (leaving aside the NYPD’s basic problem/cause for OT–lack of recruits to cover all of the street hours the dept. needs to fill) is OT, on the whole, always going to be more expensive than hiring a new person?
For short periods–say someone’s out sick or on vacation, etc.–it obviously makes sense to just pay an experienced current employee to work longer. But what about longer periods? At what point do you, the employer, do better to hire someone new? Even if the NYPD had enough recruits to fill all their slots, for example, it still costs a LOT to train those recruits, and every person you add presumably adds a bit more to your day-to-day admin/mgmt costs (i.e., ten more people on the payroll are ten more people that need a supervisor, that need to have healthcare benefits, pension management, etc. etc.).
So what’s the straight dope on OT?