Overtime paid to DMV field office employees more than tripled in the first six months of the year, compared to the same time last year, as the beleaguered state agency grapples with massive customer demand for federally-mandated Real ID cards in the midst of new software and customer processing systems.

It’s literally made some employees sick with stress.

One technician at an East Bay field office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she fears she might lose her job, was so overworked she took a leave of absence, she said. She woke up with headaches and went to bed with headaches. Then her stomach started to hurt, and she began throwing up, she said.

“I was forgetting things; I was crying,” she said. “You got customers cussing you out, and managers telling you to ‘Go, go, go!’ That was my final straw.”

Since the DMV began in late January issuing Real IDs — a federal form of identification required for domestic flights beginning in 2020 unless the traveler carries a passport — customers have complained of long lines and waits of up to eight hours. Some have waited only to be turned away because they had the wrong paperwork.

As complaints rolled in, overtime paid to field office employees rose a whopping 232 percent in the first six months of the year, compared to the same time period last year, according to data the DMV provided this news organization in response to a public records request.

The number of overtime hours rose from 47,489 in 2017, at a cost of more than $1.4 million, to 152,816 hours in 2018, costing taxpayers more than $4.8 million. That doesn’t include July, or the month of August, when the state began sending DMV headquarters staff and employees from other state agencies to help triage the hours-long wait times. The agency in August also started offering Saturday hours at 60 field offices.

Despite these efforts, on Monday, Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox urged Gov. Jerry Brown to convene a special session of the legislature to audit the DMV, echoing a request from lawmakers that had previously been denied.

It wasn’t just Real IDs slowing down lines, said Cullen Grant, a manager at a Los Angeles field office. The department also changed its customer processing system, which forced employees to take additional time to check in customers. Around the same time, the DMV also started requiring customers wanting a driver’s license or ID card to fill out applications in new, electronic kiosks.

Not everyone is computer savvy, Grant said, so technicians who normally staff windows to process people’s paperwork were pulled from the counter to help customers navigate the new electronic system. Then Motor Voter, a new program to make it easier to register to vote at the DMV, rolled out in April and was fraught with errors Grant attributed to inadequate training.

“That’s really when the overtime started to explode,” Grant said. “You had employees working in excess of 50 hours in (a month).”

Rep. Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, who in August had called for an audit of the agency, blasted the agency’s mishandling of voter registration information for roughly 23,000 drivers, according to a report last week, and what he called “gross mismanagement of employee overtime.”

“This kind of inept leadership has driven the DMV into the ground and taken DMV employees and the people they serve with it,” Patterson said. “It’s time for change at the top and an audit to go along with it.”

It’s been hard for employees to keep up with the pace, Grant said. And it’s resulted in a 30 percent absentee rate in field offices, which includes planned and unplanned days off — meaning nearly one-third of the state’s employees are absent any given day, according to a Sept. 5 DMV report. The DMV did not have data about its absenteeism rate last year.

Beginning Aug. 3, the state sent 465 DMV headquarters staff and employees from other state departments to various field offices throughout the state to help reduce wait times, said Marty Greenstein, a spokesman for the DMV. That figure has since been reduced to 119 as the DMV ramps up its staff, said DMV spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez.

As of Monday, there were 185 new full-time employees working in field offices, she said. The DMV also brought back 110 formerly retired employees and added 264 “emergency hires,” which means they haven’t yet completed required statewide exams. The legislature authorized the DMV to hire 730 employees to help process Real ID applications and reduce long wait times.

“These are temporary solutions to help fill our vacancy rate while we continue hiring (full-time) positions,” Gonzalez said.

But, so far, Grant says those new hires have had only a minimal effect on wait times, which the DMV reported dropped by an average of 30 minutes statewide in August. It takes time to train new employees, and new employees are naturally slower, he said.

Related Articles Going to the DMV? Here’s what you need to know

Can DMV be trusted to register voters after 23,000 botched registrations?

Have DMV wait times dropped? California agency says yes

Got a problem with the DMV? Get in line! “This is a Band-Aid on a bigger problem,” Grant said. “This is not something the department will be able to hire its way out of. There are deeper systemic problems.”

Those problems start with the department’s central management, said the East Bay field office employee.

If the department had started hiring new employees well before it began issuing Real IDs, if it had offered more thorough training for its employees before it rolled out a new process for checking in customers, and if it hadn’t put so much pressure on existing employees, the department might have avoided the long lines, frustrated customers and exhausted front-line employees, she said.

“We are human, too,” she said. “We deserve respect and dignity, too.”