Houston, We Have A Problem: Municipal Workers Pay Sucks

I was very excited to hear about this new site from the Houston Organization Of Public Employees:

Ever wonder what it’s like to crawl through flooded sewer pipes, or work underneath screaming jetliners as they land? Think you could work next to a 1,200-degree blast furnace sterilizing sewage or a hundred feet up in a tree wielding a chainsaw? Could you keep your cool talking 911 calls from accident and crime victims every three minutes? Now you can find out.

Houston’s public employees union today launched a new website aimed at taking city residents behind the scenes to meet some unsung heroes - the public employees who do dirty, difficult, stressful and sometimes dangerous work to make Houston a better place to work and live.

The new site, www.houstonwehaveaproblem.com, takes visitors behind the scenes to meet real city workers doing the tough jobs that make Houston work.

“Most people don’t think much about it when they turn on a faucet, or flush a toilet or take their garbage to the curb - it just works” said Sheray McKinney, a senior refuse driver with the City of Houston and a member of the Houston Organization of Public Employees, the publisher of the new site. “What they don’t know is that hard-working, creative, dedicated people are working behind the scenes in rough conditions for very little money so we all can live in a civilized society.”

Visitors to the site, which will be updated every two weeks with new profiles, can read about workers like Arthur Proctor, a Senior Sludge Processor at Houston’s 69th Street Plant, who works in stifling conditions decontaminating up to 112 tons of sewage sludge a day. Even though he’s worked at the plant for nearly 12 years, Proctor makes just $15 per hour.

A recently completed study by the City of Houston found that Houston’s public employees make as much as 21 percent less than city workers in other big Texas cities, such as Austin, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio. Houston’s city workers recently formed the Houston Organization of Public Employees (HOPE) to bargain with the City for better pay, benefits and working conditions. However, the City’s latest contract offer is just a 1 percent per year across-the-board raise for city workers making almost a quarter less than their counterparts in other cities.

Go check out the site.

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