{"id":505857,"date":"2026-10-23T22:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T22:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/505857\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T22:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T22:58:11","slug":"allegations-of-favoritism-and-kickbacks-at-oakland-airport-sparked-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/505857\/","title":{"rendered":"Allegations of favoritism and kickbacks at Oakland airport sparked investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was produced in partnership with the\u00a0Investigative Reporting Program<\/a>\u00a0at UC Berkeley Journalism.<\/p>\n

For years, dozens of custodians at Oakland\u2019s airport took home extraordinary paychecks, inflated by overtime. Some janitors made $200,000 or more in total annual pay, according to payroll records obtained by UC Berkeley\u2019s Investigative Reporting Program and The Oaklandside. Overtime payouts peaked in 2023, when eight airport janitors took home more in wages than the city\u2019s mayor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in February 2025, the union representing custodians blew the whistle. In a grievance letter to the Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport leadership, SEIU 1021 alleged that managers were rigging the process by steering lucrative overtime shifts to favored workers. And the union made an explosive allegation: the favored workers paid kickbacks to managers for more overtime.<\/p>\n

The complaint came at a tough time for OAK, which experienced the steepest decline<\/a> in passenger traffic of any major U.S. airport last year, with a nearly 15% drop from December 2024 to December 2025, according to the port\u2019s own data<\/a>. The airport is projecting that this year\u2019s $209 million in operating revenue won\u2019t be enough to cover expenses, resulting in a $47 million deficit.<\/p>\n

OAK\u2019s overtime controversy \u2014 which occurred behind the scenes and has gone unreported until now \u2014 raised serious questions about the airport\u2019s management. Run by the Port of Oakland<\/a>, which has a governing board appointed by the mayor and city council, the airport operates largely beyond City Hall\u2019s day-to-day reach. Its finances are separate from the city\u2019s, but it\u2019s viewed as an important economic driver for the city and region.<\/p>\n

The overtime controversy also raised questions about worker health and safety. A former worker and manager at OAK interviewed for this story both said the extra-long shifts and physical labor could be taxing on a person\u2019s mental and physical health. In 2023, the highest overtime earner worked 74 hours a week, on average, timecards show.<\/p>\n

Our investigation found that overtime had long been a topic of contention at the Oakland airport. Interviews with over a dozen port employees and records painted the picture of a disorganized, largely unchecked scheduling system that didn\u2019t benefit everyone and left some workers feeling cheated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, when we shared information about how much overtime OAK custodians were claiming with Oakland City Auditor Michael Houston, he said it might be time for his office to audit the port.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat assurance does the city have to make sure that adequate controls are in place?\u201d he asked about overtime spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for the custodial overtime, he said he wanted to know whether it was distributed in a way that puts the organization\u2019s needs front and center. \u201cOr is it just an opportunity for a few more tenured, well-connected employees to just line their pockets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For a year and a half, the union\u2019s allegations of favoritism and kickbacks went unanswered. The port hired an outside investigator to look into the case, but their review was delayed repeatedly by difficulty scheduling interviews with port workers, including some who didn\u2019t cooperate. When we asked for a copy of the investigation report, the port initially declined to hand it over, citing attorney-client privilege and saying that the document was still only a draft.<\/p>\n

However, the port\u2019s answer to what happened finally came this week when it released the long-delayed confidential investigation report. The 82-page document, prepared by the Municipal Resource Group, found that inconsistent practices by managers in the overtime distribution process created inequitable treatment of custodians. Favoritism also played a role in the allocation of some overtime shifts. Most other alleged examples of favoritism weren\u2019t found to be true.<\/p>\n

The investigation cleared everyone of corruption: it didn\u2019t find evidence of kickbacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe report shows the sustained findings were isolated, and the Port is taking action to discipline the individual and that allegations of corrupt behavior or kickbacks were entirely unsubstantiated,\u201d said Port Communications Director Justin Berton.<\/p>\n

But members of the union that sparked the investigation don\u2019t agree that the matter is settled. Joey Friedman, SEIU 1021\u2019s former chapter president for the Port of Oakland, said he believes the investigation was steered by the port and its results don\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n

Calling the investigation \u201climited,\u201d he said, \u201cthe port did everything they could to prevent the truth from coming out because it would create a situation where there would have to be a large payout to SEIU members, and discipline to multiple members in their management team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berton said the port has made important changes to its overtime system to ensure that, going forward, overtime is fairly distributed in accordance with the custodian union\u2019s contract.<\/p>\n

Complaints about an unfair system reached a boiling point last year<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Skytrax<\/a>, which rates airports, gave Oakland three stars out of five for the cleanliness of its bathrooms and waiting areas. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n

Complaints about overtime distribution started cropping up in June 2024, when some custodians told union leaders that hours weren\u2019t being handed out fairly. What the union came to believe, after it interviewed members and reviewed overtime records, was that the rotation of overtime opportunities had not simply broken down. Somebody had been steering it.<\/p>\n

In December 2024, union officers sat down with two custodial supervisors to discuss overtime. Afterward, they wrote in an incident report that they found locked overtime books, missing paperwork, and a lead custodian who acknowledged granting overtime without proper documentation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Feb. 19, 2025, the union filed a grievance complaint on behalf of numerous custodians who felt they\u2019d been unfairly treated. The union alleged some custodians were \u201csystematically overlooked for overtime opportunities, while others were unjustly favored with overtime that should not have been extended to them.\u201d And favored recipients of overtime, they alleged, were \u201cengaged in a quid pro quo arrangement with custodial supervisors, exchanging money for overtime appointments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The union wanted compensation for the custodians who had been passed over. It also wanted the responsible supervisors removed.<\/p>\n

Two days later, the port\u2019s labor relations manager, Pamela Trawick, wrote back. She let the union know that the port had secured an outside investigator. The port asked the union to agree to hit pause on the grievance while the investigation was underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The union agreed to the request because they believed the port would keep them in the know, Friedman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The freeze did more than halt a grievance. Left to run, much of the grievance process and its resolution would have been documented in public records, due to requirements in the union contract. The hold prevented that level of transparency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trawick then wrote a letter to the union seeking evidence for the confidential inquiry. She asked who exchanged money for overtime assignments, with whom, and when.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The union never pinned the kickback allegation to a single transaction. In writing, SEIU offered as evidence only that supervisors and favored custodians traveled together and took time off at the same time. In interviews, union officials described cash passed to a supervisor, lunches bought in exchange for shifts and drinks, flights and a rental car covered on vacation, but many of the accounts came secondhand, and the investigator judged them to be baseless.<\/p>\n

Kimberly Moses, a terminal services supervisor who was one of the managers the union accused of unfairly distributing overtime, said in an interview that she did nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

Moses described the airport\u2019s overtime record-keeping system as a binder-and-paper operation of call sheets and codes, scribbled by hand. Nobody above her placed meaningful caps on how much she could hand out, she said, but getting approval to hire additional full-time staff was a constant struggle.<\/p>\n

Port records show she signed off on overtime for some of the airport\u2019s biggest overtime earners. If anyone felt mistreated, she said it was the result of mistakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a human process, and you\u2019re doing it on paper,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what was done the day before.\u201d But a mistake, she said, \u201cdoesn\u2019t rise to favoritism and quid pro quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

The custodians whose overtime she approved included people she went on vacation with. Moses described two trips with subordinates to Mexico in recent years: one in Cancun, and one in Michoac\u00e1n. Her traveling companions included a few custodians the union alleged were benefiting from the allegedly unfair system. The union members raised the possibility that the trips \u2014 how they were paid for \u2014 might have been part of the alleged kickbacks.<\/p>\n

It was friendship, Moses said. Nothing more. She understood how the travel could look, \u201cbut that is not the relationship I had really with any of them,\u201d she said. Everyone paid their own way in Cancun, she said, with no pooling. In Michoac\u00e1n, the group pooled money, she said. She figured she spent at least $2,500 of her own on accommodations and wine, called her grasp of the accounting poor, and said, \u201cI may or may not have paid more, you know, in a collective sense, but it wasn\u2019t about that. It was going to, you know, enjoy the trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moses retired at the end of 2025. She said her decision had nothing to do with the allegations or the port\u2019s investigation, which by then had been running for nine months and, by May of this year, had cost the port at least $98,000.<\/p>\n

Edie Brown is one of the workers who felt harmed by the airport\u2019s overtime system.<\/p>\n

She was hired as a custodian in 2011 at $4,092 a month, a single mother of two who finally didn\u2019t need a second or third job. By 2019, her pay reached $183,000, including $99,000 in overtime, payroll records show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou making some money. You living a good life. You being able to get your kids and your family into a different tax bracket and into a different area code,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s life-changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown was not named as an alleged participant in the kickback scheme. She said the work was feast or famine, and after a carpal tunnel injury took her off the job for over three years, she came back in 2024 to few overtime opportunities. Newer employees were getting the overtime she felt she was eligible for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said she went to a supervisor to complain that the hours weren\u2019t being handed out the way the union contract required. Overtime calls are meant to go out in order of seniority, and every custodian on staff is supposed to get a call before anyone gets called a second time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Edie Brown was one of OAK\u2019s high-earning custodians until she came back to work from a carpal tunnel injury. Credit: Brian Krans for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n

Two weeks after Brown\u2019s complaint, the port notified her she was under investigation for workplace conduct, according to records. The alleged conduct occurred months before her complaint and involved the length of her lunch breaks. In December 2025, the port issued its notice of intent to terminate her, records show. This year it fired her, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her union alleged in a formal grievance that the investigation and the firing were retaliation for her whistleblowing; the port denied the allegations. Her complaint is still pending.<\/p>\n

Brown says her health has been permanently impacted by injuries sustained on the job. She remembers working long hours but now questions whether it\u2019s good for workers\u2019 well-being. Over one nine-day stretch in February 2024, she worked 100 hours, timecard records show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t even remember some of my children\u2019s childhood because of being so addicted to working and trying to make a living for my children,\u201d she said. \u201cMan, I missed it. That\u2019s the biggest regret.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all airport custodians, overtime has topped $2 million annually for three years running, while filling the 11 janitorial vacancies recently listed as open would cost roughly $1.4 million a year, based on the typical salary and benefits package for new airport custodians.<\/p>\n

The Bay Area\u2019s other major airports do not appear to have the same problem with questionable overtime spending. At San Francisco International Airport, the highest-paid janitor earned $107,000 in wages, including overtime, in 2023, according to payroll records. San Jos\u00e9 Mineta International, a larger and busier facility than Oakland\u2019s, contracts out the work and spends less than half of Oakland\u2019s $8 million annual janitorial bill.<\/p>\n

What benefit the extra hours brought to the airport is hard to see. When airport supervisors inspected custodial areas in June 2024, they gave more than a third of them the grade the airport\u2019s own manual defines as \u201ccomplete neglect.\u201d Six percent were perfect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Skytrax<\/a>, which rates airports, gives Oakland three stars out of five for the cleanliness of its bathrooms and waiting areas.<\/p>\n

Moses has come to see the overtime issue at the airport as a health and safety one. A custodian doing the job right, she said, should be \u201cpretty tired when you\u2019re going home in the evening\u201d; stacking a second shift on top, especially overnight, \u201cadds a whole other layer to that physical demand.\u201d Due to exhaustion after working so many hours, she said, \u201cthe basics will get done, but they\u2019re probably not doing that much.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere absolutely needs to be limits, because the city has an interest in making sure that the people who are working on its behalf are able to perform their duties,\u201d said Houston, the city auditor. \u201cThat is not in their individual interest, that is not in the interest of the City of Oakland, and it is definitely not in the interest of the Oakland community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Airport leaders say they\u2019ve made changes to fix how overtime is allocated<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Port officials say the situation with OAK overtime has been thoroughly investigated and that they\u2019ve also updated the airport\u2019s overtime scheduling system. Credit: Amir Aziz for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n

The port released the findings of its 20-month-long investigation this week, after the Investigative Reporting Program and the Oaklandside told port leaders we planned to publish this story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dorian West Blair, the investigator for Municipal Resource Group, found that the airport\u2019s system of handing out overtime assignments was \u201cinconsistent, leading to the inequitable treatment of custodians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the other allegations \u2014\u00a0that supervisors were ignoring seniority rules when awarding OT shifts; that supervisors intentionally gave preferential treatment to certain custodians; that supervisors immediately hung up on disfavored custodians who called to inquire about OT or removed them from the call sheets; and that supervisors concealed violations and retaliated against custodians who complained \u2014\u00a0were \u201cunfounded,\u201d according to Blair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the investigation did find evidence of misconduct by one supervisor. The supervisor failed to place custodians on waitlists and was found to have incorrectly stated that someone had refused overtime when they actually hadn\u2019t. They were also shown to have exhibited favoritism towards at least one custodian.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another airport employee, a lead custodian, also gave preferential treatment to the same employee.<\/p>\n

The investigation concluded that the kickback allegations were unfounded. Union representatives\u2019 claims that certain custodians paid supervisors or bought them lunch in exchange for overtime opportunities were found to be missing \u201ccredible evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding one of the Mexico vacations Moses took with her colleagues, Blair wrote: \u201cIt is highly unlikely that the Custodians would spend substantial amounts of money for a single Supervisor to receive some OT shifts.\u201d She found Moses\u2019 account of the trip credible. She concluded that the allegations against her were based on \u201cinterpretation, assumptions, and speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the investigation found recurring inconsistencies in the way supervisors offer overtime. Blair wrote that the lack of written standard procedure resulted in \u201cboth possible and actual unintentional inequities in how overtime is offered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman, the airport worker and former SEIU 1021 chapter leader said he doesn\u2019t think the information in the report is honest and complete. Because the port hires and pays investigators, he said, it can steer the process in its favor and direct investigators towards things \u201cthat they were okay finding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company\u2019s done everything it can to pretend that it did a fair and honest investigation and found nothing. Well, you know that\u2019s just not even close to true,\u201d Friedman said. \u201cEveryone that was involved in this, from the custodians through our leadership team that touched on this, and that talked about it, and that saw it, knows for a fact that this was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the investigation was underway, the airport replaced the old, paper-based overtime scheduling system.\u00a0Berton said the port had planned to update the system since 2019, but the pandemic caused delays.<\/p>\n

Overtime now runs through a software called Arcos that assigns shifts by seniority through an automated call verification process, said Berton, the port spokesperson. \u201cThe Arcos system ensures overtime is distributed fairly, efficiently, and in accordance with the union contract.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berton added that the port and SEIU 1021 will \u201ccontinue to work in partnership\u201d on issues the union raised about how overtime is allocated.<\/p>\n

One change that could reduce the airport\u2019s use of overtime is hiring more workers.<\/p>\n

Custodian job vacancies are posted and being filled \u201cas quickly as the civil service process will allow,\u201d Berton said. Each posting draws more than 1,000 applications, all of which must be screened, tested, security-cleared and trained over a period of months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Relief may also come from a direction that has nothing to do with reform. Air travel is forecast to fall further, and with it, the port said, \u201ccustodians at airports such as OAK will likely see fewer overtime opportunities as staffing levels would be adjusted to meet demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever the port does next about overtime, at least one key official in charge of approving the port\u2019s annual budget, including overtime, did not know there was a problem to fix. Over four years, the port\u2019s board approved the airport\u2019s budget unanimously each time. Staff presentations included data showing rising overtime costs, but commissioners do not appear to have questioned the trend.<\/p>\n

Andreas Cluver, the board\u2019s vice president and the only commissioner to agree to an interview, said he was unaware of any issues related to custodial overtime. He said he found some custodians\u2019 wages hard to believe. But he wasn\u2019t concerned. \u201cIf there\u2019s anything going on that is not according to the contract,\u201d he said, \u201cwe would hear about that through the grievance procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

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