‘Nobody desires to do the job for these wages’

To discover the variety of staff members paid below the encompassing market place premiums, equally exterior firms and the city’s human assets department gathered salary info from public-service career classifications in Pima County, neighboring towns and governmental jurisdictions in the Phoenix place.

The effects showed 3,250 Tucson metropolis personnel are paid beneath ordinary current market rates for their respective careers, even though 738 are paid out in just or higher than the marketplace averages.

Metropolis staff compensated below current market prices include things like 1,850 non-public security personnel, 820 employees in the Tucson Police Division and 580 in the Tucson Fire Office.

In accordance to Jonathan Schlecht, a representative of AFSCME, the community service employees union, this news does not occur as a surprise.

“We went 10½ years with no a increase up till a couple yrs back. We hear excuse following excuse, that’s 1 of the problems,” he mentioned. “We can not employ ample workers since no one needs to work for these wages.”

Ongoing retention problems are element of what spurred the council to take motion on wages.

The Tucson Law enforcement Division has continually struggled with maintaining officers on-board. Several go to schooling academies the town pays for, then sooner or later acquire work with greater shell out in neighboring law enforcement departments.