In January, compensation for City of Greensboro employees is going to go through a major adjustment.
The city plans to change the pay schedule from twice a month to biweekly, and at the Tuesday, Dec. 6 City Council meeting President of the Professional Firefighters of Greensboro Association Dave Coker spoke against making the salary schedule change.
Coker said that the proposed pay schedule change was causing “anxiety and concern” for many city employees.
He said that the change to a biweekly pay schedule represented a “step back” for city employees.
Coker said that “for 10 months out of the year the income of employees will drop by 8 percent.” He noted that the compensation for the year would be the same, but that since most bills are paid on a monthly basis, having to go 10 months of the year with an 8 percent salary reduction was going to be hardship for employees – particularly those on the lower rungs of the pay scale.
He said, “We’re asking you to direct the manager to keep the pay like it is.”
Coker noted that the semi-monthly pay schedule had worked well for the city for three decades and that changing to biweekly would have “a significant negative financial impact.” He said, “This is basically a pay cut for city employees.”
As Coker said, “the devil is in the details” and in this case the new biweekly pay schedule will result in employees being paid 26 times a year versus the 24 times a year city employees receive paychecks under the current semi-monthly plan.
Currently under the semi-monthly plan, hourly city employees are paid for 86.67 hours twice a month. Under the biweekly plan employees will be paid for 80 hours every two weeks. Two months out of the year employees will receive three paychecks, but for the other 10 months they will receive less compensation during the month than they do under the current system.
The city staff has requested that $660,000 in American Rescue Plan funds be used to allow employees to cash in up to 10 hours in leave time as part of a transition assistance program.
Sounds reasonable enough, who is the creator of the new 26 pay period scheme, and WHY?
Thank you for covering this.
Changing from our current schedule to bi-weekly essentially forces every employee to become a payday lender to the city. This will allow the city to hold nearly $1.2 million of employee’s pay each month for 10 months of the year. The city benefitting on the backs of it’s employees by reducing their monthly income. Hardly seems like the right thing to do, especially in the difficult economic environment we are currently in.
Do you really think that the city gives a damn about the employees?every department is understaffed because of the new pay structure “Except for upper management” they have created A mess where they will not even have the staff to plow streets this winter or have police presence where it needs to be.crazy times
Weekly, monthly, whatever. How is it the taxpayer’s fault that you can’t manage your money? No wonder that some people reach age 65 broke.
Unless your pay is adjusted down, a bi-weekly pay of your monthly salary is actually a raise. If you don’t know why, you need to attend grade school again.
In my career I worked for employers who paid me on a monthly, weekly, bi-weekly, and twice monthly basis. The best of all, by far, was the bi-weekly schedule. If you carve out certain schedules for certain groups of employees, you’ll have a cob-web of difficulties and programming of computers to deal with. Maybe this effort by the fire employees is similar to the one in which they wanted to earn $15.00 an hour minimum, when in fact, they are paid for the number of hours they work, not a fixed schedule of 40 hours a week with overtime.
The Rhino needs to empty their cache for comments since every time I want to post something, it says it’s a duplicate post. What’s going on?
Maybe this effort by the fire employees is similar to the one a few years ago when they came before the Council and wanted to be paid $15.00 an hour minimum. Special rules by the federal Dept of Labor spells out when overtime can be earned by police and fire personnel for number of hours they work in a pay period, not a 5 day work week. Paying them by the hour, with overtime after 8 hours, would give them a huge windfall. Maybe what they need to do is work 8 hour shifts and not sleep and cooking in the stations. However, I would not vote for that.
The thing is currently the City is paying employees for 86.67 hours per check even when you only work 80 hours in a pay period but you may work 90 in another pay period. So now you get paid for a 80 hour pay period. And the pay day will be every other Friday, instead of Tuesday this time and then maybe a Monday, or other weekday the next time.
City employees get a paycheck on the next payday instead of having to wait an extra payday before they get paid. So you start on the 1st and get a check on the 15th for 86.67 hours even if you have not worked that much.
Yes for 10 months you will take home less that this year but 2 months you get 3 checks. So you still get paid the same each year.
Most places get paid weekly or bi weekly and they all seem to manage.
This has nothing to do with tax payer. Please enlighten me with the grade school math that makes this a pay raise?
I’d say it’s more like college finance/economics, but the principal is called time value/preference of money. Essentially, $100 in your hand today is worth more than $100 in your hand tomorrow, next month, next year, next decade, etc. This is part of how free markets will determine interest rates for different types of investments and debts.
So in this situation, getting your money biweekly is (slightly) preferable to getting your money semi monthly. Getting it weekly, or daily, would be more clearly better. Getting it monthly or annually would be more clearly worse. However long the pay cycle is, is an interest free loan to the city for that duration of time. So you got that part backwards.
L947, btw
Principle*
Jsr I’m familiar with the principle and it proves to me, bi-weekly is bad for employees. Your getting less money a day or two sooner yet allowing the employer to hold 8% of your money for 6 months. Our current pay schedule already pays in 15 days or less, 17 of 24 pay days. 17 days between checks occurs twice as does 18 days and these only occur because they paid you 2 days early the previous check.
Bi-weekly is the most common pay schedule because it benefits the employer, not the employee. It allows them to hold a large portion of money and use it as working capital or earn compound interest. Our city has a $14.6 million dollar monthly payroll. Take 8% of that and workout the compound interest on it or the working capital value. Pretty stout number for the city and they get it on the backs of their employees. If anyone thinks employee well-being was being considered with this change, your fooling yourself.
While this change might not cause you or I to loose a house for some it will have major effects. 63% of Americans live pay check to pay check and that includes half of those earning six figure salaries. A reduction of $300, $400, $500 each month will cause some to miss car, rent, or mortgage payments and face repossessions or evictions. Some will have to reduce their retirement contributions just to make things work and that is a negative, long term impact. Reducing retirement contributions will cause another 2% reduction in monthly compensation.
The pay cycle/interest free loan discussion is a talk for a different day but we’re in the same department so give me a shout anytime.
City of Greensboro should take some of the money they throw at pet projects and provide math and budgeting classes to employees that cannot figure out a pay schedule change. So sad our public education turns out adults that cannot figure out how to live within their means.