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Lowest paid workers owed consideration

By JEFF WEBB
Published December 11, 2005

Compression.

One dictionary definition says it is "the process or result of becoming smaller or pressed together."

It also is the term Barbara Dupre, Hernando County government's director of human resources, uses to describe raising the pay of one group of county workers without giving an across-the-board bump. In particular, Dupre says, the group just ahead of the group receiving the raise is affected because the lower-paid workers gain too much ground too fast as they close the wage gap on those who may have worked there longer.

Dupre told Times reporter Asjylyn Loder recently that a proposal being pushed by the local Green Party to raise the county's lowest-paid government workers would not be fair to the higher-wage employees. If the County Commission enacted a so-called "living wage," Dupre said, it would be necessary to raise the salary of everyone, not just those on the bottom rung of the pay ladder.

Commissioner Jeff Stabins sees it differently, and he wants his colleagues to schedule a discussion about the possibility of instituting a living wage. It may not be as high as the $9.50 an hour the Green Party seeks. And it may not extend to the employees of private contractors who do business with the county, as the Green Party would like. But Stabins says it's worth talking about.

"Let's face it," Stabins told me last week. "We're talking about the people who clean our toilets. We should pay them a little more. It's the right thing to do."

Although all the affected jobs are not custodial, Stabins' generalization is accurate, figuratively speaking.

Loder said only 79 of the 700-plus county workers earn less than $9.50 an hour. Twelve of those earn less than $7 an hour, 20 more earn less than $8 an hour, and another 28 earn less than $9 an hour. The lowest-paid worker makes $6.37 an hour, which is just 22 cents above Florida's $6.15 minimum wage.

At the very least, commissioners should gather more information, including having Dupre run the numbers for what it would cost to raise the salaries of those 79 workers, and then set aside some time to talk about the concept, as well as the practical application, of the living wage initiative.

Most segments of Hernando County's economy are booming. Yet, in the midst of all this growth and prosperity, the number of working poor is increasing. While the commission cannot control that problem in the private sector, it can set an example by developing a strategy to fight poverty among its public servants.

A living wage is one way to do that. So is providing child care, transportation and training for the workers who need it most and who demonstrate that the investment is paying off in increased productivity and dependability.

Throwing money at a problem, in this case poverty-level wages, is seldom a long-term solution. But if the commissioners put their heads together, perhaps a relatively modest increase in hourly pay could be the first step in a bigger plan to ease the "compression" their lowest-paid employees deal with every day.

Jeff Webb can be reached at 352 754-6123 or webb@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 11, 2005, 02:15:36]