NYT: Flat Pay Upsets N.Y. Sewer Workers (some up to 15 years with no raise)

[Omaha Steve]

I'm a waste water treatment plant operator. I know just what they do for a living.

OS

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/nyregion/18sewage.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Martin McGuire, right, with co-workers outside the Hunts Points Sewage Treatment Plant, figures his counterparts in the private sector are making double what he does, without wading through raw sewage.

By RUSS BUETTNER
Published: March 17, 2010

On a good day, the unpleasant byproducts of human existence simply flow tepidly beneath their noses.

On lesser days, unmentionable objects block the huge grates in the sewer channels. The workers descend knee deep into the muck and scrape at the dripping clogs. The gunk drips to their shoulders and splashes on their faces, working its way into pores and psyches.

But many of the nearly 1,200 workers who process some 1.4 billion gallons of New York City sewage every day say they can handle those indignities. What disgusts them, what has tested sobriety, credit ratings and marriages more than any stubborn stench, is the fact that their salaries have not budged, in some cases for as long as 15 years.

“It’s disrespectful,” said Michael Enright, an 18-year sewage-treatment veteran. “I’ve got to change bearings and seals on million-dollar pumps with raw sewage flowing between my legs, and we make less than an auto mechanic.”

In general, the city’s municipal labor force has enjoyed nearly a dozen years of steady wage increases from the Bloomberg administration and the second term of the Giuliani administration. Most have seen salaries rise at a pace faster than inflation and better than the national average for both private and public employees, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

But a few municipal unions, for differing reasons, did not catch that rising tide. And none seem to have fared worse than the workers who keep the city’s sewage system running.

In the 1990s, two unions representing the sewage workers pulled out of negotiations for incremental increases and took a different route offered in state law: seeking a ruling that they were not being paid on par with similar jobs in the private sector.

Last year, the union representing about 800 sewage-treatment workers, Local 1320 of District Council 37, thought that it had finally won and would soon see a raise of about 50 percent, to match the pay of some Con Edison workers who the city comptroller and an administrative law judge had determined perform similar work. But the elation, after nine years without a contract, lasted only days before city lawyers filed an appeal, stretching out the process again.

“That was such a slap in the face,” Mr. Enright said. “We had guys who fell off the wagon because of this appeal.”

Sewage-treatment workers earn an average of about $42,000 a year, a figure unchanged since 2001. Los Angeles pays a starting salary of $71,000 for similar work.

FULL story at link.