Blogger's Note: This is the second of a five-part series posing questions to the 10 County Council candidates seeking five at-large seats. All Democrats responded. Republicans ignored the questionnaire.
Just about every Democratic NorCo Council member supports an increased minimum wage. They have often spoken of the need to pay people a living wage. They could start with the county's own employees. Many of them still earn make less than $15 an hour. I know many in supervisory roles who work second and third jobs just to put food on the table, while others must receive food assistance. This needs to stop. The best way to determine an appropriate wage is through a salary study, but the county has shied away from one. A study of nonunion workers was done in 2009, but was so controversial that no action was taken.
Northampton County has had no salary study done for decades, leading to salary compression between newcomers and long-time county employees. Would you budget for and insist on a salary study?
Ron Heckman, - Salary compression is certainly a concern. I am open to budgeting money for a possible pay study. It is important to discuss what that would entail. We need to examine the cost of doing such a study and the scope of the study should be clearly defined. Only then would I consider supporting a study.
Tara Zrinski. - I do believe a salary study would be in the best interest of the county employees, especially in light of the post-COVID reality where wages and salaries as well as the cost of living, seems to have been so dramatically impacted, I would want the County employees to be fairly and justly compensated for their work.
Lori Vargo-Heffner. - I would not support an overall salary study, but I would support a mechanism for creating a timetable to review departments in a sequence every five years. Each union and department has unique responsibilities which may need to be considered, so I would endorse a smaller, steady approach which could become the standard operating procedure.
Bill McGee. - As former chairman of county council’s personnel committee, I understand how employee pay needs to fair, equitable, yet reflect their responsibilities,and work load. I am aware that they did a HAY Study in 2009 but no changes were made following the results. I would be opened minded to a salary study in the future.
Patti Bruno. - Yes.
John Brown. - No response.
John Goffredo. - No response.
Nicole Romanishin. - No response.
Kristin Lorah Soldridge. - No response.
Annamarie Robertone. - No response.
20 comments:
I'd raise wages for jobs that are unfilled. If the job is currently filled, the wage is clearly sufficient. If you'd like higher quality employees, you're insulting current ones who come to work each day at current wages. If they were such awful employees or their lives were so bad, they'd do as millions do - leave for another job. Address labor shortages with higher wages. Leave the rest as is.
Bethlehem Twp has an opening for a police officer, starting salary of $70,000+, starting??? No experience or college degree required!
TO 6:38 AM:
I WORKED AT THE COUNTY AS A COLLEGE GRAD WITH EXPERIENCE. MY SALARY WAS 33K. AVG SALARY IN MY FIELD IS 53K. I LEFT BECAUSE I KNEW I WAS WORTH MORE, NOT BECAUSE I WAS AN AWFUL EMPLOYEE. YES, SOMEONE ELSE TOOK UP MY POSITION, BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE BEING PAID WHAT THEY DESERVE OR THAT A PAY RAISE SHOULDNT BE CONSIDERED. IF YOU KEEP WAGES LOW, THE TURNOVER RATE WILL BE HIGH AND THAT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE. THIS OF COURSE IS ASSUMING THE WORK ENVIRONMENT ISNT TOXIC TO BEGIN WITH.
Just your act 120 certification . Just be honest when writing...
Don't forget the ones that stayed are now filling the positions of the ones that left. So they are now doing more than one single person should be tasked with. I am a current county employed and I have not been able to do my actual job description in two years. McClure was able to do a decrease in taxes only by not allowing hiring for open positions. McClure followed the John Brown plan of fuck the hard working employees task them more save by not hiring
"BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE BEING PAID WHAT THEY DESERVE ..."
The act of showing up each day consummates a daily contract of work for wages. They're getting exactly what they deserve because that's exactly what they agreed to accept. You felt underpaid and took your talents elsewhere. I salute you. I've done the same. Your story disproves your statement above.
They need to do the annual step increase for all employees like the system was designed to do, if you work here as a correction officer for 15 years and are still only at step 2. Something is very wrong with the system
Peg Ferraro and Ken Kraft tried to address it years ago and nothing happened then and with these answers you can clearly see none of the current members of council understand their own charter and personnel policies
Score: 0.0
Where is Mr. Myers response ?
Myers is not up for two years
3:08, agree step increases should be more routine and should be based on employee performance over the past year, the way career service refs intended.
Ken Kraft is on the other side of the fence now. Pulling in 80 some thousand a year to do almost nothing. He is not for any pay increase.
anon 3:08, I don't know what you are reading as the majority said they were open to a pay study. They even said they would budget for it. They want the parameters of it which makes sense. McGee is the only hard no. County Executives hare pay studies and people know McClure doesn't want it do one.
Before you grant Ferraro any sainthood, remember she consistently voted down any COLA's for retirees.
Actually it is McGee and Hefner that won't support a pay study. Zirinski, Heckman and Bruno will.
Myers, he is trying to cause no waves keep it nice and smooth. No controversy just keep his last name out of everything.
This is not a knock at Unions, but the reason the pay scales are out of wack is because you need two different pay scales for the work force. One pay scale is for career service employees and the other is for union employees. Unions negotiate for their pay raises and they get what they bargain for. If you get what you bargain for, then what's the bitch.
It's a darn shame that you're cleaners start at 10 and change an hour to clean shit, puke and blood from bathrooms, you people should be ashamed of yourself!!!
Peer rating system done anonymously would Ferret out the truly deserving. Every employer has their 10% that don’t pull their ores. Patronage jobs should be illegal if a public entity. We have to get honest with ourselves first ,then set the criteria for positions. Yes NorCo has some very honest,hard working people ,deserving of competitive pay. Leadership is an art form.
@12:56 as an employee that’s always looking to fill positions- your statement is untrue. McClure has allowed filling of positions. Open positions are due to several reasons but not being allowed to fill them is simply not true.
Pay studies already exist. Most county jobs are in fields of work that have state and national membership associations that promote and support these workers. These groups have researched and published salary studies for years. Council could easily assemble those available studies as a place to start to look at this subject. Start the process yourselves. We shouldn't have to always pay a private firm the equivalent of a bunch of county employees yearly salaries for pay studies that already exist.
A pay study in the county costs a large amount of money. At the end you find your staff are underpaid so much you can't possibly make up the difference. So why do it. Use pacah to get the figures and call a few of the local homes. They share. Lehigh county has been doing it for years. At least for Gracedale salary comparison. Even the hospitals will share so you see the competition. And it costs nothing but some of human resources time.
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