Columbia Water and Light Advisory Board works to fix dwindling linemen ‘crisis’ from low pay

The Columbia Water and Light Advisory Board called the amount of electric line workers leaving the city utility company a “crisis” and agreed the issue is mainly caused by low pay.

For at least an hour during the board’s monthly meeting Wednesday morning, members discussed with current and former utility employees why linemen continue to leave and what could be done to fix the issue.

Jim Windsor, current Water and Light customer and former assistant director of the utility company, said one big issue is city policy.

Windsor first brought the issue of the lack of line workers and line workers leaving for better pay up at a city council meeting in June. Since that meeting, another experienced lineman resigned, according to Windsor.

Windsor told city council the 2018 fiscal year’s budget targeted to employ 19 line workers and 10 apprentices. Now, 12 line workers and eight apprentices are employed. Windsor said he was aware several of the remaining line workers were actively seeking other employment.

Windsor referenced two documents: a policy resolution about the city’s philosophy for employee compensation, as well as administrative rules, which fall under the policy resolution.

He highlighted two statements under the policy resolution that he said contradicted each other: “Whereas, the City has an interest to maintain salary ranges that are competitive with labor markets from which employees are recruited, both within the public and private sectors;” and “Given the desire to provide fair and reasonable compensation and also ensure the prudent use of taxpayers funds, the City of Columbia targets benefits and compensation levels at the median of the competitive labor market.”

Windsor said the statements are contradictory because the first part says the city wants to maintain competitive pay, but the second part says the city targets pay at median levels, which would automatically mean another company is paying 50 percent higher than the city.

Under the second document Windsor highlighted, the administrative rules, it said salary adjustments may be made to employee salaries to address significant discrepancies between the city’s level of pay and market pay levels for jobs.

Windsor said when he was assistant director, he tried to give a line worker a pay raise to keep them from going to another company, but was told it wasn’t allowed.

Windsor also pointed out that when the city contracts line workers from other companies, those workers get paid twice as much as the salary and benefits of the highest paid city line worker. The contract pay doesn’t include the additional cost of vehicles and equipment for which the city must also pay.

Deputy City Manager John Glascock said the city manager proposed a 25-cent raise for all city employees, but Water and Light Board members said utility employees are paid from a separate funding source and therefore should get larger raises to be competitive.

Board members voted unanimously to request information from utility staff about the budgeting consequence if experienced line workers received a 15 percent merit-based pay increase. The board wanted to get those numbers before bringing that proposal to city council.