Earlier this month, Washtenaw County employees staged an informational protest outside the county’s Administration Building to draw attention to their low pay. Employees say that the county does not pay them enough to live in Washtenaw County. They’re probably right. According to their sources, Washtenaw County wages trail the market by 7%. (Frankly, I suspect this percentage is significantly low.)
By the MIT Living Wage Calculator’s reckoning, a single person with no children needs to earn $19.12 per hours ($39,800 annual) to make ends meet here. And on the county’s website, there are a half-dozen open positions that pay less than $19 per hour or $39,800 per year. For a person with one child, the living wage in Washtenaw County jumps 216% to $41.31 ($86,000/yr). There are no open positions at the County that pay that much.
I’m not going to criticize the county’s system of job classifications and pay scales. The Board of Commissioners had heard the employees’ concerns and say they’re working toward a resolution.
What I am going to say is that high inflation makes it very difficult for employers to hide their practice of low-balling non-executive employee compensation. When gas is $4.50 per gallon, and a pound of ground beef is $6.00, people notice that their pay checks don’t go quite as far as they used to. I would also suggest that politicians have endeavored to tightly control inflation in part to disguise deliberately low wages.
WCC should stop enabling low Washtenaw County wages
Public employers have a responsibility to set wage floors for their workforce, especially in places like Washtenaw County, one of Michigan’s most expensive places to live. Having just watched the EMU professors strike for higher wages, public employers also have a responsibility to treat all workers equitably.
For example, it’s disingenuous for a WCC Trustee to “thank” the administration and the other Board members for providing workers with a 1.5% annual wage increase (and bake a similar increase into the faculty contract) when she knows that she is party to an agreement to increase the college Executive’s salary by a multiplier that’s four times as large.
It’s also disingenuous to set a minimum wage floor for employment at WCC while at the same time authorizing non-degree certificate programs (and in some cases, associate degree programs) that train workers for jobs in fields with chronically low wages. WCC has no obligation to enable those employers to continue underpaying their employees. If WCC executives are convinced that we’re in a rich community, then they should act like it. Let low-balling employers pay for and run their own training programs. (The free market will quickly take care of them.) Instead, let’s focus the college’s efforts on programs that lead to higher Washtenaw County wages.
We’re all pulling the same sled. Let’s try pulling it in the same direction.
Photo Credit: griffinarts , via Flickr
