Well, yah gotta know employees are NOT happy about a holiday furlough when they blatantly set up a Go Fund me page;
Gannett, which owns the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the Watertown Public Opinion and the Aberdeen American News, is requiring all of its employees to take a week unpaid over the holidays. This decision affects 15 journalists.
The funds raised will be distributed evenly to help cover the lost income during the furlough week. Many of the journalists affected are young and not from the area. They are worried about not being able to pay rent and their bills while still being able to go home and see their family. This fundraiser aims to help them enjoy the holidays without stressing about rent payments.
Gannett has been doing this for several years now and it should be NO surprise to the employees. I guess over the years I have personally just gotten used to NOT getting vacation, insurance benefits or holiday pay from several of my employers (mostly hospitality). While I agree it sucks, one week unpaid is not the end of the world. If you can’t afford to miss one week’s pay out of the year, you really need to take a closer look at your finances.
UPDATE: I was informed that this page was setup by a NON employee for the employees of Gannett
UPDATE II: Today I heard chatter that the city employees have been openly talking about the bonus they may receive and many are happy with it. One employee mentioned this recently happened in Rapid City;
After two failed motions by the Rapid City Council Monday, 430 city employees will receive $500 in COVID-19 bonuses.
The Rapid City Council voted 6-4 to approve the bonuses for non-public safety employees who worked during the pandemic in 2020.Â
Notice they are calling this a Covid bonus. I can see why it almost didn’t pass. While Sioux Falls virtually had NO shut down in the private sector a large portion of Sioux Falls city employees were allowed to work from home.
I also find it ironic that Mayor Poops is considering such a bonus (like Rapid City) after receiving this endorsement;
In the police briefing today it was mentioned that new recruits would get a hiring bonus. I am not opposed to this, because it is a normal practice for the private and public sector to offer hiring bonuses.
But it got me thinking. I thought I heard TenHaken talk about this recently;
“Our city employees are seeing the bonuses and incentives and work-from-home opportunities and every kitchen sink being thrown at employees … so we have to continue looking at how we’re being aggressive in retaining our people and making us an employer of choice,†he said. “We have to get serious about how to compete with the private sector. I have a lot of unfilled positions causing stress for the city.â€
First off, besides the corner of 8th & Indiana and a couple dozen panhandlers, the city is running just fine. If we are short on city staff, it certainly isn’t being seen. Day to day operations are not any different then pre-covid.
I don’t know how the city could possibly give retention bonuses. I don’t think it has ever been done before. It would also be a troubling move for the city union(s) to accept a bonus instead of a raise. A bonus is a one time payment that really doesn’t do much to advance your salary. Every year the city council rubber stamps a property tax increase by a certain percentage, and based on their argument this is good because that compounds over the years. Raises also work that way. It would be much better for city employees to negotiate a permanent pay increase instead of a lousy stimulus check from the city and signed by Poops.
I also don’t think it is appropriate to give retention bonuses to current city employees. Studies have shown that current city employees are already some of the best paid in the region AND further more, the city is not a for-profit institution. What would this bonus be based on? Tax collection? Which is also concerning because that means we are collecting too much if we have money to throw around for bonuses to employees who are only measured by their service instead of profits. Also consider around 30% of city employees don’t even live in Sioux Falls or contribute to the tax base.
Further more, where are we at with tax collection last year? Does the mayor have some kind of inside information he is not sharing with the public and a bucket of money he can just throw at the city employees. Why not spend the money on fixing more infrastructure?
But the biggest red flag is the ethics of giving out bonuses right before a city election. It is nothing else but a huge bribe for the city employees who are eligible to vote in April. I’m not even sure that is legal?
If any of this is true (who knows with all the babbling Paul does in the interview), I encourage the Unions to reject the bonus and ask to go back into negotiations for a percentage increase instead and throw this bribe back in Poops face.
*Some of my city hall moles have told me there is something else brewing. I guess there was some secretive meetings held this week with (some select) councilors and directors in Poops Quarters about some kind private/public partnership with developers and a possible higher education institution. Probably to assist TenHaken’s Tool Team at DSU?
I have been advocating for a long time that living wage in South Dakota, especially Sioux Falls should probably be nipping the heels of $20.00 per hour, imagine my surprise when this report came out;
This means that of the 50 states, (Puerto Rico and D.C. are not included) South Dakota is one which costs the least to survive in. But how does a $9.95 minimum wage match up to a $45,000 living wage?
Assuming a 40-hour work week, and 50 working weeks per year, a $9.95 wage comes to $19,900 per year. To match the living wage for South Dakota, the minimum wage would need to rise to $22.50/hour.
Our cost of living adjustments are also very high (notice housing);
While we have a governor who blabs about liberty and freedom and a mayor who decries ‘wage inflation’ you can tell the reality is that we lag very far behind and don’t look to their supposed leadership to help the situation. It’s time to start electing representation that wants to make changes instead of coddle the business elites, hospital industrial complex, and welfare developers.
Move to South Dakota, work at a designated retail business, and receive $1,000 cash. That’s the premise of a new incentive from the South Dakota Retailers Association designed to address the workforce shortage in retail, restaurants, hospitality, grocery, trades and many other businesses. Individuals from out of state who come to work in South Dakota can qualify to receive a $1,000 cash payment that would supplement any hiring bonuses or other incentives offered by an individual business.
It’s been awhile since I have taken a swipe at the SDRA, but this one is almost too easy. Who would move to South Dakota at the beginning of winter to take a no benefits part-time job that pays half of minimum wage (if you are a server) for a $1,000 bonus you don’t get for another 6 months? WTF? When I first read this, I thought maybe it was some kind of joke.
I have argued for a long time that the hospitality industry in South Dakota and across the country should offer at least a buy in to health benefits even if you are part-time. They should also offer PTO and compensate ALL tipped employees the full minimum wage. Minnesota did this several years ago and it hasn’t hurt the industry one bit, some would argue it has improved it.
As I told an elected official yesterday, “The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough hospitality workers in Sioux Falls, the problem is we have to many mediocre restaurants.†You know as well as I do that 99% of eating establishments in Sioux Falls are below average, not just on food quality, but service and price point. Maybe the solution to our problem is to have restaurants that pay their workers well ALL YEAR LONG, offer benefits and in return we will get a better experience as a consumer. But like most things in good old Sodak, it is about the greed of the business owner while the employee and the consumer are left in the dust.
As I said a few months ago, it was baffling to me why we would give a $94 million dollar TIF to incentivize businesses to come here. First off, it is pretty obvious we don’t need anymore job creators currently;
To find out more about what might be going on, I reached out to Secretary Marcia Hultman, who leads the South Dakota Department of Labor.
“What you are seeing and what we’re hearing anecdotally, the numbers really support,†she said.
They definitely do. The most current number she could pull for me Friday was 23,500 active job openings in the state’s database. Nearly 10,000 of those are in the city of Sioux Falls.
You read it correct, 10,000 available jobs in Sioux Falls, and we want to incentivize business to come here? It’s ludicrous. Factor in our schools are over crowded, affordable housing is a rarity (where we should be investing tax rebates) and building permits are through the roof. If anything we should be giving the tax rebates to the citizens to create more affordable housing and propping up our current infrastructure instead throwing it at Egg Roll factories owned by Koreans.
I also found this interesting in the article;
Another tip: You should list a wage with your opening.
“Statistically, if the wage is posted, even if it’s not the best, those job orders get more activity. If nothing is listed, the assumption is that it’s low,†Hultman said.
Nearly every business I talk to has increased pay, some significantly. Frankly, that’s not a bad thing, to me, in a state that has struggled with persistently low wages in some sectors.
I have often said the city council should pass a city ordinance that any job listed within city limits should have the minimum and maximum pay listed in the ad.
It’s time to end most if not all TIF’s in the city and tax rebates for the supposed (low wage) job creators and start helping the people who live and work in this city with more affordable housing and propping up infrastructure, and we can do it without welfare to big business. This is what happens when you have a partisan greedy mayor on cruise control and a former developer executive running the city as Chief of Staff.
Ironically, when she left the city the first time she met me for coffee. She told me the deciding factor to leave the city, besides the last mayor being a total jackass was that she was forced to write the Sanford Sports Complex TIF which she felt set a bad precedent for TIFs because of it’s size and that it was NOT for housing or blighted property. Funny how her feelings have changed on the Tifiliciousness of TIFs and doesn’t seem to bothered by the bad precedent she set.
l3wis 
