The vote to increase pay for some Syracuse city employees is on pause.
The Syracuse Common Council’s vote on raises for the mayor, councilors and city auditor were held up after some city councilors found issues with the rollout of a 3% cost-of-living pay increase for some of the city’s non-union staff. Syracuse Common Councilor Pat Hogan said the council should have been informed of the pay increase ahead of time.
“We weren’t aware of it, it’s about a quarter of a million dollars,” Hogan said. “The council is in charge of the budget, and even though the mayor has the power to do that, this body has to make tough decisions on monies.”
The city’s Chief Operating Officer Corey Driscoll Dunham said the pay increases were included in the budget the council approved last spring. She said the raises are to maintain consistency.
“We implemented 3% pay increases for non-union employees which matches what the unions are receiving in their contract,” Dunham said. “So just consistency across the board, just to make sure that we can continue to attract and retain employees to do the city’s work.”
Hogan said the raises come at a time when the administration is already facing criticism on labor management from some of the city’s union employees.
“We would have loved to have been informed about it,” Hogan said. “Also, this happens in the tableau where our union employees are very disturbed with some of the practices that the administration has had as far as labor management practices.”
Dunham said the raises are in effort to keep the city competitive with other employers.
“The city wants to be an employer of choice and we’re competing for the same workers that everyone else is competing for,” Dunham said. “We have a very generous benefits package in terms of our healthcare, obviously the pension is a bonus to be a public employee, but we have to make sure that our wages are competitive and that they stay competitive and in order to do that we need to make sure that these cost of living adjustments happen.”
But, she said the pay increases could have been better communicated.
“Communicating to the council that the raises were going through is a step that we can certainly add for the next time,” Dunham said.
