2014 SD Economic Development Annual Report
This was one of the pages in the report. What does it say to you? Where the rich get richer and the working poor get the shaft. This is so insulting to the hardworking, over taxed workers of South Dakota.
This was one of the pages in the report. What does it say to you? Where the rich get richer and the working poor get the shaft. This is so insulting to the hardworking, over taxed workers of South Dakota.
So I was looking at the list of 2015 city salaries last week (DOC:2015-Wages-January) mostly out of curiosity, and decided to pull up my 2014 city salary listing (DOC:Â Sioux Falls SD 2014-Wages-January) to do a couple of comparisons. As I started digging, I started to see a trend, so I gave the spreadsheets to a friend to see if what I was seeing was correct. A couple of days later, I sit in awe at the massive raises given to management this year compared to the very small 2-3% raises given to hourly employees.
Management:
2014 Employees:Â 422
2015 Employees:Â 412
2014 Salaries: $29,627,149.78
2015 Salaries: $29,981,602.74
These numbers are approximate due to calculations done to extrapolate hourly to 2040 hours per year average.
Hourly:
2014 Employees: 1087
2015 Employees: 1063
2014 Wages: $46,619,989.80
2015 Wages: $46,891,405.84
Here is a department breakdown of employees (DOC:2014-15 Department list) You will notice in this document that many of the Street Department employees moved from that department into Engineering. I still haven’t figured that one out yet, but it may be some justification for larger raises.
What is shocking is where the big raises came in, mostly the Fire Department. Which I find curious since there have never been any public reports about how effective the FD has been in putting out fires (preventing extensive damage, etc.), just saving lives. Also the fact that the FD is also responsible for EMS emergency calls, and have a good track record with them, yet we have contracted the most expensive ambulance service for the city.
But other departments like the Health Director, Library, Mayor’s office and PD also rolled in some big ones. While the graphic below shows the ‘Big Hitter List’ if you look at the entire city listing (DOC: 2014-15 Combined Salary List) You will see that many in management got over a 7% raise, almost DOUBLE what the hourly wage earners received.
Strangely enough, there seems to be a correlation between departments making the ‘Big Wins’ list and management getting raises. Not sure if this is a coincidence, but I am guessing it is.
I also must point out, this is a simple spreadsheet only comparing WAGES & SALARIES between the two years and doesn’t go into details about bonuses and does not include benefits and pension plans. Wages only, and the percentage increases are based solely on the information provided from the City of Sioux Falls in the two wage tables.
I’ve been told by a city official that certain formulas are used by HR to determine what a salary increase should be when moving up in the department and title changes, and how it compares against the private sector. But I can tell you from reading this preliminary report, I have no idea what that would be, especially when you see a landfill employee getting a $18K a year raise simply by going to salary vs. hourly – it almost looks like an accounting error, and very well could be.
What is disheartening about this review is that the city really is picking ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ when it comes to it’s employees and management (some managers only received a 3% raise). This is something that is more prevalent in the corporate world and not in the public sector where achievements are measured differently.
I guess this is what we get when our city is run like a business.
UPDATE (1): Just when we thought the fun was over with crunching the numbers, Poly brings up a point about the temp staff. Here is breakdown of them (DOC: Temporary employees per year )
Well the Hubbel craft doesn’t say many wise things, but when she does, they are whoppers. This is Lora’s online comment to the Argus story about hiring welders;
Lora Hubbel · Top Commenter · Sioux Falls, South Dakota
I don’t get it. Sioux Steel, if you need welders….THEN TRAIN THEM! Why look to the government to educate and train someone for your business…DO IT YOURSELF! You don’t have to do the “schooling”…just give them hands on training. Give them a small job at first and as they learn more they can do more complicated jobs. Since WHEN have we pouted about not having enough STATE TRAINED workers? Man up Sioux Steel…take control of your own destiny and train your own workers.
Besides having the desire to want to be a welder and having skills working with your hands, there really isn’t a reason why you can’t train welders on the job. As someone who has worked in manufacturing in the past said to me;
The training schools do not teach useable welding skills. Through the last 40 years of our trying to use their trained skills in many South Dakota factories, the first thing we learned to do with the new employee was to break all the bad habits taught at the SD schools. This is a reason these students have to leave South Dakota. We do not have programs being taught matching the needs of the factories.  The necessary skills for South Dakota welding shops / factories are not taught by the instructors not understanding the businesses. Most South Dakota businesses do not need “certified†welders. These shops need to train their own employees to do the light gauge work South Dakota factories utilize. The need for the training academies is expensive bullshit to force under-educated kids to get sucked into paying high priced loans to study useless skills.
These factory owners do not want to take the farm and city kids into their factories anymore to go through a rigorous training period. We taught many workers everything about welding the way we needed them to weld and some are still at it 30 years and more later at the factory we started in 1965. This is the way it needs to be done to build South Dakota and a dedicated workforce.
No money for public education, but $50 million to subsidize training for private industry, go figure.
Yesterday at the Sioux Falls City council informational meeting, Darrin Smith did a presentation on the $500K the city will be granting to businesses to recruit workers. Some interesting points he made;
1) He said employers are telling him they are having trouble recruiting workers in the $20 an hour an lower range.
2) He said recently in Sioux Falls there was 2,300 available openings and in the same period 3,800 people applied for unemployment.
Am I the only one that sees the correlation here? I think some people would just rather draw unemployment then work for a low wage.
I think to put some teeth in this grant process the city should require anyone seeking the recruitment money that they pay market scale-living wages. In other words $16 an hour or higher.
I also think for every dollar a business gets in grant money they should roll over as a bonus to employees that get recruited and stay with the company over one year. In other words, if Company A receives $5000 from the city in grant money, and they hire 5 people that stay with the company for over a year, each employee would receive a $1000 bonus.
We can recruit low wage employees until the cows come home, but it doesn’t have much of an affect on our local economy and is really just a waste of tax dollars.
Before I get smoking on this post, I will say I don’t think anyone should be drug tested unless you are working in public safety, trucking or other jobs where safety can be compromised. I think people should be judged on their accomplishments and experience.
That being said, I have often wondered why lawmakers require public employees, and some have even suggested welfare recipients, to be drug tested when they are not? I thought about this the other day after turning in my resume for the county commission seat.
What do you think? Should we drug test elected officials before they are sworn into office? Or better yet, drug test them when they turn their petitions in for candidacy?
Hey, what’s good for the goose, is good for the gander.