Thursday, July 21, 2011

Dunn County May Have To Raise Pay to Keep County Road Crews -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here (regional links break early).
Dunn County officials discussed increasing road department wages during a meeting at the Dunn County Courthouse on Wednesday morning. 
The increase was proposed to make the road department more efficient in the wake of turnover and competition with energy jobs, officials said.
Auditor Reinhard Hauck said that road department wages start at $16 per hour and reach around $21 after five years experience.
I have a comment but will hold it for now.

3 comments:

  1. They only need to raise the pay if they want roads.


    Do they?

    If so, try a 50% increase, with more maybe later.

    anon 1

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  2. I'm a retired at 57 years, 4 months of age Minnesota civil servant who put in 33 years. It worked out for me but I can't tell you how many times my "faith" was tested. I worked my career in Minnesota's largest county. When the economy was good we had trouble finding and hold onto help. When the economy was bad we were "the cake eaters".

    Minnesota (which is totally screwed up BTW) has the same state pay scale everywhere in the state. Historically, the "market" and wages were far lower in many outstate areas where you had agricultural mechanization but few lakes for recreation. State workers clinged to jobs there.

    The Baaken with it's boom is the opposite. The law of "supply and demand" works against finding and holding people in civil service in the Baaken as statewide pay scales. Add to that the Baaken government employees are probably overwhelmed with work as it is so no "featherbedding" there.

    Basically, civil service pay should reflect "market" in the specific market area.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amen.

    I was also very fortunate with regard to a pension from US Air Force, but it appears cost-of-living increases are a thing of the past. We have not had any in the past two years; none expected in near future.

    But no complaints.

    ReplyDelete