Top of the Teeter Totter Stuck

The following piece is a reflection about the data in the accompanying charts.

You may remember that one of the greatest challenges on the playground teeter totter was being able to sit with your friends and balance the board. Economic systems have similar challenges. Looking at our Whatcom County and city governments’ budgets may give readers some insight about our local economic systems. Even though the budgets are available for public review, not many citizens know about government budgets.

My project to report on government salaries began when I wondered why there were not lifeguards on our beaches protecting swimmers, and why my friends working as librarian helpers were often laid off. The city reported that they could not find qualified lifeguards.

Then, I wanted to discover the percentage of wage differences between 1968 and 2012 and compare those differences with minimum-wage changes. With the help of professional mathematicians, specific numbers helped me see what was obvious instinctively. Just taking one office (mayor of Bellingham), the math computed as follows: from 1968 to 2012, the mayor’s salary increased 1,400 percent, and the minimum wage increased 420 percent. The reader may do the math for other positions (2012 wage minus 1968 wage divided by 1968 wage times 100 = percentage increase)

Mayor Linville made $42,000 as a state legislator, a position she recently lost. State legislators’ and other state government wages were frozen from 2008 to today. So in changing jobs from state legislator to city mayor, Linville’s pay rose over 300 percent, to $128,928.

Why would there be enough money to pay the top wage earners and not enough to pay the low-wage or minimum-wage employees?

Salaries for Top Whatcom Government Workers

Getting Good Workers

Some people questioned how we can get good government workers without offering competitive salaries, they assumed to be assuming that some corporations pay significantly more than the government, and if we do not employ skilled workers in our local government, we will be forced to make contracts with expensive corporations. The salaries of the corporate workers are usually kept confidential.

One government worker, not wanting to be identified, reported that sometimes local public employees had to train contract corporate workers because the contractors were not knowledgeable about specific local issues. Yet government is often willing to pay corporations for workers rather than hire more salaried public workers.

The source went on to opine that Governor Gregoire froze government worker salaries to appear to save money and balance the budget. Now jobs have been awarded to corporations who charge more for their work than government workers and sometimes must be trained by lower-paid state employees. Consequently, some of our good government workers have been quitting their positions for corporate jobs that pay significantly more.

Looking at Present City Salaries

No Incentive for Contract Workers

Some government workers may lack the incentive to research their fields, as their positions are contracts that may not reward continuing education or training.

Council Members Poorly Paid

It was surprising to see how most of our commissioners and council members are poorly paid in contrast with lead positions, just over and sometimes under $9,000 (Port commissioner) a year. Perhaps if we paid them more, they could or would do more research on their own rather than rely on directors for information. Internet research is fairly easy, although accuracy through Internet sources is not guaranteed. But research does take time that is not being paid.

Looking at Present City Salaries

Higher Pay Advantages

A friend from Port Townsend complains about the $60,000 annual salary that each Jefferson County commissioner receives. The Jefferson County human resources clerk verified that each of their three county commissioners makes $63,926 a year. Jefferson County has no county executive. In comparison, the Whatcom County executive makes $147,000 a year, while the commissioners make $19,500 each.

In the last 2012 election, perhaps if more voters had known Port Commissioners make so little, they would have approved three more commissioners to offset executive director decisions. No degrees are required for any of these positions, yet their power is great, especially that of the executive.

Rewards for Research

Maybe instead of paying our councilmembers and commissioners more, we should specifically reward them for doing research. According to Lynden’s city administrator, Lynden at least has a policy that pays its councilmembers for meetings attended. Bellingham City Council secretary, J. Lynne Walker, said that Bellingham city councilmembers do not get paid for committee meetings. Whatcom County Councilmember Barbara Brenner wrote that although there is about a $500 expense account which members may spend, expenditures must be approved by a majority of other councilmembers.

Walker added that committee work is how members decide how to vote. Some members are on one committee; others are on as many as five. The same is true for county commissioners. Their work is minimally paid and committee work does not have extra pay. Each city councilmember only makes $22,000 a year. Our councils are important for staying in touch with voters and major decisions as well as staying aware of new ideas.

Rewarding Initiative

The limited salaries of Whatcom County Council and Bellingham City Council members do not afford much time to work on committees or share knowledge. Committee workers should be paid appropriately for their time. Ideally, workers and councilmembers who research and educate themselves about ideas and inventions could reduce problems and expenses.

Port of Bellingham and Whatcom County Top Salaries

How Does the Food Co-op Pay?

There are worthy company compensation policies to consider. Bellingham’s Community Food Co-op is similar to the government in that all Co-op members are owners. I asked long-time Food Co-op Education Outreach worker Kevin Murphy how the Co-op makes wages fair.

In summary, his approved answer follows:

The board will be deciding upon a new policy to take the average earnings of all Co-op workers, multiply that average by three, and that will be the highest wage attainable by any full-time employee. The highest wages will be averaged with the lowest full-time workers. A policy similar to this used to exist, but in order to get qualified workers, that policy was eventually rejected. The new policy has not been officially voted on yet.

Murphy said, members do not know if the Co-op board will accept this policy, because it wants to hire the best workers. Offering high wages often does that.

Ralph Nader’s Ideas

In Common Dreams (June 8, 2012), Ralph Nader presented “Don’t 30 Million Workers Deserve 1968 Wages?” Nader’s title inspired my looking at Bellingham’s budget in 1968. I looked at the U.S. Inflation Calculator: Consumer Price Index from 1913 to 2012: (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/consumer-price-index-and-annual-percent-changes-from-1913-to-2008.) This site presented “data based upon a 1982 base of 100.” In 1968, the base was 34.1 and in 2012, it was 226.655. Stated simply: “Adjusted for inflation, the 1968 minimum wage today would be a little above $10 per hour,” Nader reported.

Nader realizes how abysmally American minimum wage earners are paid. Their current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is not a livable wage, he stated. The current minimum wage in Washington state is $9.19. For both federal and Washington state, tipped employees’ hourly minimum wage is just $2.13. (Minimum-Wage.org)

Nader explained how President Franklin Roosevelt started the minimum wage so that wages were livable. That meant that the wage should adjust with inflation. It has not.

Meanwhile Walmart, McDonald’s, and other large businesses have been “raising their prices and executive compensation since 1968.” Nader pointed out that “… big corporate bosses … make $11,000 to $20,000 per hour … their average pay was up another 6 percent in 2011 along with record profits for their companies. Historically, polls have registered around 70 percent of Americans favoring a minimum wage keeping up with inflation.” That number included Republican workers. Even Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum favored adjusting minimum wage. Nader added that small businesses need not be compensated for higher minimum wages because President Obama has enacted 17 tax cuts for small businesses. Also, the AFL-CIO and member unions, the nurses’ union, the NAACP and La Raza, and leading social service and social justice nonprofits all favor adjusting the federal minimum wage for inflation. Finally, Nader suggested that people refer to TimeForARaise.org for more information.

Creating Equal Pay

In support of higher taxes to solve some inequity problems, Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman presented his ideas and facts in The Daily Review, “Economic Justice and Economic Growth are not Compatible,” Nov. 19, 2012.

“… [I]n the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91 [percent] … while taxes on corporate profits were twice as large, relative to national income.…Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants and yachts are back, bigger than ever — and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of ‘socialism.’”

Many citizens want to make life more equitable for all. Unless we can adequately tax the corporate executives making the gigantic bucks, when will we see lifeguards, sufficient librarian helpers, better schools, a higher minimum wage, or wages for workers that are not much lower than those of their supervisors? We all need to become aware of the whats, the whys, and the wise of what is the grossly unbalanced teeter totter before it tips even further, and top salary increases will have to be reported again.

Society has been on a one-way ride on the teeter totter for a long time. One side of the teeter totter is stuck in the mud at the bottom, bringing to mind the rhyme which goes: “Teeter totter/Bread and water/Wash your face in dirty water.”