CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) —The City Council's Workforce Development Committee recommended that some high ranking Chicago officials get raises to make up for being shortchanged for more than a decade.
Unionized City employees get scheduled salary, cost-of-living increases and merit pay. Deputy and assistant commissioners do not, and Human Resources Commissioner Christopher Owen said their pay has been stagnant since 2009.
"We are regularly seeing employees refusing promotions to non-union positions for fear of losing [cost-of-living increases] and merit increases," Owen said. "Staff are routinely earning as much as or more than their managers and supervisors."
Budget Director Susie Park said new pay schedules should be created for them, and she noted that only 10% of the City's staffers are non-union.
"We have not kept — for this small subset of people — we have not kept up with the [cost-of-living increases] that all of our union counterparts have had," Park said.
She said only about 350 workers would be affected.
Park estimated the change will cost the city $2.5 million this year. That would cover 250 of the workers — the other 100 workers would be caught up in the following year's budget.
The vote to approve the measure was almost unanimous.
It's worth noting that this measure includes every department except for police and fire, which have a similar problem but different issues to work out.
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