5% Pay Raise Granted to 900 County Employees

In a move that will cost about $2.4 million a year, the County Board of Supervisors gave a 5% pay raise Tuesday to 900 employees, most of them management-level workers.

The supervisors also gave preliminary approval to a 5% raise for themselves. The increase would raise a supervisor’s salary from $47,844 to $50,236. Supervisors will take action on their raises next Tuesday.

In other action Tuesday, the supervisors approved raises for surgical nurses because of a critical nursing shortage at Ventura County Medical Center.

The 900 employees in line for the 5% raise include about 100 top-management personnel, about 600 middle-management supervisors, prosecutors in the district attorney’s office, hospital residents and about 60 clerical workers who deal with confidential employee matters.

The average salary among the 900 is $47,500, Personnel Director Ronald Komers said.

The raise was met with resentment by Barry Hammitt, executive director of the Public Employees Assn. of Ventura County, the bargaining unit for about 6,000 rank-and-file county employees.

Hammitt said the employees he represents are getting a smaller annual increase--2.5% last month and 1.5% next March. He said it was a bogus argument that the county needs to raise the level of management pay to recruit and retain employees.

Citing only four top management job vacancies, he said, “We don’t have a problem recruiting and retaining managers. If you pay top dollar, there is no turnover.”

Hammitt also criticized the supervisors for the pay increase when the county is in a serious budget crisis. Jobs are not being filled to save money, services are being cut, and employees are being laid off to save money, he said.

The supervisors unanimously approved the raise with little discussion.

“We’re doing what is right, fair and equitable,” Supervisor Susan Lacey said.

After the hearing, Supervisor Madge Schaefer said, “Why should we penalize the very people we’re asking to perform higher and better with less?”

Komers said the 900 are entitled to the raise partly because the last cost-of-living increase they received was in December, 1988. Since then, the cost of living has risen 9.5%.

He also said management salaries must keep pace with the market to attract employees, especially given the high cost of housing in Ventura County. Some classes of employees, he said, are 15% to 20% below the market.

The 5% increase, he said, is comparable to the raise given deputies under a contract reached last July. A similar increase was awarded engineers last April. And, he contended, PEAVC employees actually are getting a 4.9% increase considering other benefits rolled into the package.

The $2.4-million pay increase comes at a time when the county is dealing with heavy state funding cuts. To raise more money, the supervisors recently voted to charge cities fees for booking people into Ventura County Jail and to assess school districts for the collection of property taxes.

Although city and school officials have protested the new fees, they didn’t fault the supervisors for approving the pay increase.

“You don’t save money by not paying top management reasonable salaries,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said. “Shouldn’t the county be faulting the state for cutting off their money?”

The supervisors approved salary increases for the surgical nurses because the county is unable to attract nurses to fill positions.

“Current staffing shortages are causing scheduled surgeries to either be bumped or canceled,” Komers said in a report to the supervisors. “Hospital administration reports the pending closure of surgery suites without the immediate recruitment of additional staff. A newly constructed surgery suite awaits staffing to become operational.”

The action will bring the top surgical nursing salary to $22.60 per hour. Several other county nurses told the supervisors that they should be entitled to the same increases.

Hammitt asked that the supervisors reopen contract negotiations on all nursing salaries.