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Date: 3/10/2021
HOLYOKE – Pay for public library employees in the city of Holyoke was a significant topic of discussion during the most recent Ordinance Committee meeting.
ouncilor Rebecca Lisi said city employees’ salary had been a topic of discussion for some time. The problem, she explained, was that the city was investing time and resources into training employees, and after a short while they’d take their experience to do the same job for a neighboring community where they’d make more money.
Lisi said the committee had heard in November why increasing salaries and “bringing them up to date so they’re competitive with other communities was important.”
“We heard a lot from department heads how we’re training people, they’re leaving, we’re losing time, money and resources that we’re sinking into training them. And they’re leaving, for the most part, to go to other communities and do the same work,” she said.
Additionally, Lisi said there was “a concentrated problem” with regard to the library staff and their employees’ compensation. “We have several people in the library who are actually not making what’s currently minimum wage,” Lisi said.
This, she explained, was the result of a loophole “that allowed the municipalities in the state of Massachusetts to not meet those minimum wage requirements.” Lisi said she believed this was something that Holyoke would not want to “carry forward as a practice.”
She then went on to present a revised hiring schedule and compensation plan for the city’s employees, including those in the library. In addition to presenting new pay scales for library and other city employees, Lisi said some positions were eliminated – including an animal control officer position, a business projects manager, an assistant purchasing agent and comptroller for police.
Councilor Terence Murphy said while he was supportive of nearly all the changes, he felt as though someone working a full time job at the library in the first five pay grades should be making at least $30,000. “I really think we need to make a consideration of having a higher percentage increase, that they are getting paid what anyone doing quality work and a full time job should be, able to go home and not have to try to figure out how they’re going to pay their next bill,” he said. Councilor Mike Sullivan said he was also supportive of adopting a library salary schedule, however, he felt as though pay raises for the library staff should not be tied to pay raises for other city employees.
“This is much much much more than a library salary schedule. What’s being put in front of us is much more than that,” he said. “While I very much favor a long overdue increase for the library workers, the fact that I think adopting it is tied to adopting pay raises across the board for other departments, and tying the two together and making theirs dependent on the adoption of the whole package is not fair.”
Councilor Linda Vacon, however, said she had been in the process of putting together a separate item for the library workers, but was told by library staff they’d rather remain tied to the other pay raises.
The meeting was then opened up for public comment, where councilors were asked if pay raises for the library staff would ensure workers were being paid minimum wage. City of Holyoke’s Personal Director Hector Carrasquillo said he believed the pay raises would bring all positions up to the current minimum wage except one potentially. “The only position in question would be grade one, the assistant cataloger,” he said.
Lawyer Russell Dupere said that while most public sector employers do their best to meet minimum wage, “but it’s actually not required from a legal perspective.”
He said, “So the public sector is not actually governed by the state minimum wage law, oddly enough. The federal minimum wage does apply.” Additionally, when budget concerns were addressed, Lisi emphasized that to implement the raises for Schedule A, which had been presented to the committee, on July 1, 2021 for those that were currently beneath the pay scale would only cost an additional $134,000.
After pushback from community members and councilors regarding the pay raises for library staff, Lisi said the committee could recognize the pay situation wasn’t ideal, however, “this is what we have to work with.”
Attorney and former city council president Kevin Jourdain said he felt as though they should hold the public sector of the city to the same standards that the private sector were held to. He said as the minimum wage was increased to $15 there would continue to be pay disparities and pointed out that the same would soon happen to cafeteria workers for the public schools. “We tout ourselves as being in favor of the minimum wage, but interestingly enough most citizens don’t realize that Holyoke, like most municipalities, exempts itself from the minimum wage. So therefore we should hold ourselves to the same standards that we ask from the private sector,” he said.
Additionally, he asked for a provision to be added to the item to ensure that no public employee would be less than minimum wage in the future. Jourdain also said that while there was discussion about improving salaries at the top of the pay scale, the city had never had an issue filling those positions and they should instead be focusing on employees at the bottom of the payscale. “If that means we have a minimum salary of $13.50 then we go to $14.25 and then $15, that’s going to ensure we at least take care of the folks at the bottom,” he said.
Ultimately, the items were tabled so more research could be done regarding the subject and what it would take to get every employee on the pay scale to be paid minimum wage.