Many people continue to state that City of Salisbury employees did not receive a raise last year, but this is not totally true.
The City had several employees in Neighborhood Code and Compliance as well as departments downtown that only worked 35 hours a week. The City uses a 40 hour pay grading system and these people were paid for 40 hours a week. Last year the 35 hour a week people were bumped up to 40 hours and were given a raise to compensate them for the additional hours. I'm told the raise was in the neighborhood of 12.5%.
This caused a quiet uproar in Public Works.
There are positions, such as receptionist, that are paid by the grade. Consider if a receptionist in a random 40 hour a week department made $400 before last year. Their counterpart in the 35 hour a week departments would have been moved to finally work the same amount of time, but been given an additional $1300/year for working the same amount, in the same position. Giving NSCC and other departments a 12.5% across the board raise for working 40 hours (even though they were paid on a 40 hour pay scale to begin with) was a slap in the face of all City workers that get paid for 40 hours on a 40 hour pay scale and actually created a new pay scale. Now there are people that work 40 hours a week for 40 hours of pay and there are those that work 40 hours a week for 40 hours of pay +12.5%.
When the secret came out (and it was a secret) Public Works employees circulated a petition in protest with signatures from every department and included several department heads. The petition was read by both the City Council and the Mayor and they did nothing.
This is relevant now, because the current budget includes "reinstating lost work hours" of 8 employees of the NSCC. Basically, this means those 8 people will continue to be paid above the 40 hour a week model, while only working 40 hours a week.
I am told, but have not been able to yet verify that the rest of the positions have been moved back to working 35 hours a week, while receiving 40 hour a week pay.
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What about Lore Chambers?
ReplyDeletethis comes on the heals of yesterdays report where 2 city workers are getting great paychecks and one is having a proposed raise over 15% while the city is going bankrupt, once again, good ole boys and back scratching takes precidence over who can actually do a job and fiscal responsibility
ReplyDeleteSo the city employees get's raises while the county employees get nothing...for the last two years! Well that is odd!
ReplyDeleteNo 8:27- the City workers are not and did not get raises as a whole only a select few have... that's the point here. The City Council and Mayors are and have played favorites with raises for two consecutive years.
ReplyDeleteWhat a joke! I have been working with the City for over 10 years and I am not making much more than my starting salary. Even before the economy went bad, we were lucky if we recieved 1or2% and if the insurance increased, you recieved nothing.
ReplyDelete