New union contract already drawing complaints

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

 

The ink on the new three-year contract with Key West City office clerical and blue collar workers has barely dried but complaints have already surfaced.

 

Key West City Commissioners approved the contract by a 5-1 vote at their Jan. 21 meeting but not after some dissent from Commissioners Billy Wardlow, Clayton Lopez and Mark Rossi. They were responding to comments made by Jean Zeman, a shop steward for Teamsters Local 769. Zeman, a technician in the city police department, emphasized she was speaking for herself, not the union, but urged commissioners not to approve the contract because senior staffers received only a two percent raise the first year while some junior employees received up to21 percent.

 

Zeman said she understood that the lower level workers were found to be significantly underpaid, according to a consultant’s report to commissioners in July. But bringing lower-level staff up to wage parity has put some of their wages only slightly below the salaries of long-time employees, she said.

 

“I feel strongly it should not come down on the backs of the senior people, the very people who have been good, loyal employees and who have stuck with the city through thick and thin,” Zeman said.

 

Commissioner Wardlow was the lone vote against approving the contract, which is retroactive to Oct. 1 and expires Sept. 30, 2017. The contract gives a minimum raise of two percent the first year of the contract and three percent in the second year.

 

Wardlow said city negotiators should have offered a sliding wage scale, giving the lowest paid workers a three percent raise in the first year, mid-level workers a two percent increase and anyone making over $100,000 a year would receive no more than a one percent annual wage hike.

 

“I could have saved you $68,000 the first year,” he said about his sliding scale proposition. “A lot of long-term employees are going to be upset and that’s the problem.”

 

But City Manager Jim Scholl pointed out that commissioners had voted in September to approve the Fiscal Year 2015 budget, which included giving significant pay increases to 128 of the lowest-paid city employees, a $1.2 million cost in fiscal 2015. To change the salary increases now, after union employees voted to ratify the contract by a two to one margin, is impossible, he said.

 

Commissioner Rossi urged Scholl to give higher raises to workers with at least five to 10 years’ service to the city in the next contract negotiations.

 

“For the time being, to satisfy this, go ahead and pass it and then come back at budget [time] and revisit it,” he said.

 

A 2014 survey of Key West government employee salaries showed a significant gap between their paychecks and what the market currently pays for the same job. Two-thirds of Key West’s 460 city workers are significantly underpaid as compared to comparable salary ranges at other public sector entities, according to Evergreen Solutions, the Tallahassee-based company that conducted the salary survey.

 

As a result, Scholl and Assistant City Manager Sarah Hannah-Spurlock proposed a five-year plan that would incrementally bring the lower salaries up to par with the market, a cost estimated by Evergreen at $5.6 million.

 

Teamster Local 769 members voted on Jan. 8 to approve the contract.

 

“We look forward to working with you for the betterment of our members, and for the services they provide for the citizens of the municipality,” said Roly Pina, Teamsters officer, in a memo to Key West Human Resources Director Samantha Farist.

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