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I worked in a union and as a manager of union employees.

You can't give good employees raises or bonuses because it is a union. Basically, time becomes currency of incentive. Despite the fact that it is technically not allowed, time off was given as a reward all the time.

My attitude as a manager was that if the work got done and I was meeting my objectives I was happy to let people go home early or sit in the lounge on a Sunday and watch the football game. It wasn't only me, this was common practice. It is really the only way to make your objectives as a manager the objectives of otherwise unmotivated union employees. You can try hard nosed enforcement and it works to a large degree, but one day you will need to ask those same workers to go above and beyond and they won't for a hard nose. This under the table bargaining happens in one form or another everywhere there is a union.

The key difference in this story compared to other similar ones is that the supervisor is punching the timecards. If the workers were punching time cards for each other they were running a scam. When the boss does it, he's usually buying productivity with time off.

When things are running smoothly this kind of thing tends to get swept under the carpet. I would say there is something more to the story that we don't know.