About 140 city employees make less than a living wage. More on that issue, and how Council’s now considering a raise
Above: the job description for a U.S. Cellular Center worker in “specialized unskilled work.” The job, like many others at the center, pays below a living wage.
Just over a month ago, the Asheville Blade reported on a major exception to the city’s living wage policy. In 2007, Asheville City Council first committed to paying all of its full- and part-time workers a living wage, and it renewed that commitment in 2013.
At the time the living wage was $11.85 an hour for an employee without healthcare or $10.35. Since then, Just Economics, the non-profit that sets the living wage used by some local businesses and a number of local governments, including Asheville, has declared that due to the rising cost of living the living wage is now $12.50 without health insurance or $11 with. The nonprofit, and the city’s resolution, define a living wage as “the amount that a worker must earn to afford his or her basic necessities without public or private assistance.”
But records obtained by the Blade showed that a significant number of city workers made far less than that amount. As of mid-October, about 140 “temporary or seasonal” workers made less than a living wage, in some cases making far closer to the minimum wage.
Despite the name, this category includes workers who’ve worked with the city for years or even decades. It includes, for example, a worker at the U.S. Cellular Center who’s been there since 1977 and makes $7.66 an hour, a laborer working for the city since 1998 making $10.69 an hour and a school crossing guard working for the city since 2005 making $10.79 an hour.
Also, the work isn’t always inconsistent or seasonal. One former city worker interviewed by the Blade detailed how she worked about 15 hours a week for several years. But despite this, she was still considered a “temporary or seasonal” employee. In the story, former workers criticized the lower pay rate as hypocritical, encouraging declining wages throughout the area and discouraging younger employees who found themselves laboring for the city with little hope of a raise or advancement.
At the time the story ran city staff hadn’t responded to requests to directly answer questions about this issue. Emails obtained through open records requests revealed one exchange between Council member Gordon Smith and City Manager Gary Jackson on the topic last April.
Jackson wrote that the matter was a “policy call” for Council, but said he’d never heard any complaints about the lower pay and cautioned of a “ripple effect” if it changed: rising wages for “temporary and seasonal employees” might mean that the city would have to pay more to rank-and-file full and part-time employees making just over the living wage as well. The city has also devoted $200,000 for a study of its compensation system for all employees, which it will present this spring.
Finally, after repeated requests, city staff recently responded to the Blade’s request to directly answer questions about these workers and why their pay was lower than that of other city employees. Also, it looks like the situation may change, as a majority of Asheville City Council members say they’re interested in giving the employees a raise, though others say they’re undecided.
What’s going on
While writing the previous story, I’d asked city staff for a human resources official or someone with similar knowledge to directly answer questions about the lower wages for this class of employees, the reasoning behind the policy, some of the details behind how they classify employees as “temporary or seasonal.” Over a week of requests, no official had the time to answer the questions, with city representatives citing that they were all busy. After the holidays, I made another request on Jan. 5 to talk to an HR official over the phone for a brief interview. On Dec. 8 a water pipe burst in City Hall, meaning the HR staff had to evacuate. As they settled into temporary offices on Jan. 15, I made another request, via email, to discuss the matter.
Last Thursday, Jan. 22, Human Resources Director Kelley Dickens and Communications Director Dawa Hitch answered questions about the city’s policy in a phone interview. Dickens said that paying temp/seasonal workers less has been the the city’s policy — and she claimed, that of other employers — for some time.
“Temporary/seasonal employees are classified differently and are on a different compensation plan with the city,” Dickens said. “That’s how the policy was written and implemented both here as well as other employees, that’s my understanding.”
As for why employees who’ve worked for the city for years still qualify as temporary, Dickens noted that “it’s based on the number of hours worked on a 12 month basis and the fact that the need for that employee is irregular. So if you look at an employee in the civic center who’s a concessionaire, those hours that they’re scheduled would vary from week to week based on the events and the needs of the department.”
But when asked, Dickens clarified that despite the name of the category, any employee that works 20 hours or less — or less than 1,000 hours a year — is considered “temporary or seasonal” rather than “part-time” even if their hours are consistent over many years.
Dickens also noted that each department has an allotted amount of money for salaries and a certain number of allowed full-time employees and beyond that, individual departments can choose to create other positions as needed if “there are temporary or seasonal needs as long as the department stays within what’s budgeted.”
Asked if the gap between pay for these workers and part and full-time city workers had been a topic of concern or discussion over the years, Dickens replied that “I’m happy to say that this is an important topic for the city. Compensation overall is an important topic. We are in the middle of a comprehensive classification and compensation study where we are looking organizationally wide at every position, classification and compensation. We’re in the middle of that process at this point and we’ll be taking recommendations, of course, to Council as part of the budget process this year.”
Asked again if, in the years she’s been at the city, the topic had been raised as a concern before, and if that was related to the current study, Dickens replied “I don’t know what discussions have happened in the past about this. I hate to speculate or say something that I’m not sure has or has not happened.”
During a recent interview with the Blade, Mayor Esther Manheimer noted that she’d heard from Jackson that it would take about $250,000 to get all temporary and seasonal employees up to a living wage, though she also emphasized “I’m not positive of that number.”
Asked if there was any approximate price tag to how much a raise would cost, Dickens replied that “again, that will be part of the comprehensive study. You can’t just take their current hourly rates right now and ask what’s the difference between their average schedule and the living wage and calculate that out. There are much more complicating factors.”
When the city adjusts salary for one group of employees, she said, they have to look at how all the employees in similar jobs and departments are paid.
“We would want to evaluate that to ensure there’s appropriate pay equity among the organization.”
Hitch added that “I don’t want it to be misunderstood that she’s saying that if a concessionaire needs to get a raise then management necessarily needs to get a raise too. But that’s part of the complicated compensation and classification study process.”
“I don’t know what that ripple effect would be,” Dickens said. “But we are studying that to see what the ripple effect would be, where it would be and what the cost of that be if anything.”
“Until you do the full analysis I’d hate to speculate on any sort of price tag.”
Council considers a raise
With the beginning of the year, the city starts its annual wrangling over the budget. Employee pay is the majority of that budget, and that includes everyone from department heads making six figures to rank-and-file workers making lower middle-class salaries. It also includes the “temp/seasonal employees” who make even less.
A majority of Council members say they’re interested in giving these workers a raise.
“I want to make sure we’re not using our classification system to dodge our obligations, I’m eager to make it right,” Vice Mayor Marc Hunt tells the Blade. “I’m a little embarrassed by it, frankly, that Council has really driven a living wage policy as hard as it can and yet we’re doing this at this point. Three or four years ago would have been when we should have gotten it right, but we are where we are.”
“I would like to see all Asheville city employees at a living wage rate,” Council member Gwen Wisler says, adding that she will push to incorporate that pay rate for all workers as she and her colleagues craft the budget this year.
“I’m definitely interested in seeing the city walk the walk in regards to its living wage policy,” Council member Gordon Smith says, noting that he supports a raise for temporary/seasonal employees. “If there are exceptions I would like those to be very transparent and explicit about their rationale.”
Mayor Esther Manheimer, in a recent interview with the Blade, noted that she was interested in giving these workers a raise, though she wanted more information from staff.
However, she added that she was concerned about the impact on similar positions if the temporary and seasonal workers got a raise; the “ripple effect” that Jackson and HR staff mentioned.
Some of their colleagues, however, have a more “wait and see” approach. Council member Jan Davis says he wants to see more information before backing any raise.
“To be honest with you, I wasn’t aware that we had that many seasonal or temps that were not being paid a living wage,” Davis noted. “The largest one is the U.S. Cellular Center and that’s kind of a culture all its own up there. A lot of those people have been there for many years and are used to working there and being a part of what’s going on. There are some employees that work full-time that go up there and work after hours.”
“I would have to know, going in, how that was originally figured, why and why it was not considered part of the living wage stuff we adopted,” he continued. “There’s got to be a reason. I’ve got to know more about it from HR and from the civic center management before I make a broad statement about where we should be going. I don’t want to cost people jobs because we’ve got to get in a certain dollar figure.”
When asked about his position on a possible raise, Council member Chris Pelly initially emailed the following response from Jackson: “Analysis assigned to staff. Report to be included with the market analysis and compensation report to be presented in budget process.”
Asked in a follow-up question what his view as an elected official was, Pelly then emailed back:
Naturally, I’d like to bring all city employees up to our defined living wage. As much as I’d like to be able to do this regardless of cost, as an elected official, I do have to consider the budgetary implications and its impact on taxpayers. That said, I am committed to keeping wages competitive and treating part-time and seasonal employees as I would want to be treated.
Council could also give a hike in pay to temporary workers while it contemplates a more permanent raise. In November 2012, for example, after city employees had been without a raise for three years and the city had better-than-expected revenues, Council passed a one-time bonus for its employees. The also uses reserve funds for needs that might arise or come to Council’s attention during the time between budgets. Last year, for example, Council approved $300,000 from those funds for a graffiti clean-up program and another $200,000 for the aforementioned compensation study. Could Council make such a move at this time to give temp/seasonal workers a raise while it goes through the months-long budgeting process?
On this, the elected officials were a good deal more reluctant.
Hunt noted that “I’m not going to get ahead of things. There are lots of urgent things that we deal with that we to pay then. There are some cases where we want to phase in an important measure and we want to wait until the next budget. So I’m not willing to say this is something I’m willing to push other things aside; I want to see the data first.”
“I’d look into it, but to be honest what I’m really looking forward to is the compensation study that should be out in the spring time and seeing what the effect of that compensation study is going to be on our entire employee population,” Wisler said.
“That would be definitely moving outside of policy to do that in the middle of the budget cycle,” Smith said. “I probably wouldn’t want to jump out of that complicated deliberation to do it faster. But I will say that I don’t think we ought to tout ourselves as a living wage organization if we’re not prepared to offer living wages.”
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