The whole department's rotten!
Top to bottom.
Posted on 10/02/2007 10:15:16 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
Editor's Note: If you read only one story today, I hope it will be this one. The DWP's bloated salaries, poor management and soaring rates are the most glaring example of what's wrong with Los Angeles city government. We think this is so important we've put up the salaries of all 8,500 employees here at dailynews.com. See how your pay compares with theirs. - Ron Kaye, editor
As the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power seeks a hefty taxpayer rate hike, a Daily News review of salary data shows the average utility worker makes $76,949 a year - or nearly 20 percent more than the average civilian city worker.
More than 1,140 of the utility's employees - or about 13 percent - take home more than $100,000 a year. And General Manager Ron Deaton, who is on medical leave, rakes in $344,624 a year - making him the city's highest- paid worker.
DWP salaries are on average higher than city and far higher than private-sector workers' even as the utility has come under fire for recent power outages and another round of rate hikes: A 9percent, three-year electric-rate hike and a 6 percent, two-year water-rate hike.
The salary disparities have emerged in recent days as a crucial issue in intense negotiations with six unions representing nearly 22,000 city workers - about half the work force - whose contracts expire today.
"To the average person, they're going to go, `Wow, that's a great salary and they're charging me more,"' said City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who is among council members who have asked the utility to justify its rate-hike request......
(Excerpt) Read more at dailynews.com ...
These local governments are trying to compete with the federal government...
Which government, local or federal wins the biggest prize for fraud? The competition here is tough.
This guy is making 344k per year, and he's sitting on the beach! LOL!
Those are hefty salaries.
I know someone works on Navy base in accounting dept. She pays the credit card bills for gov. employees....boy does she have stories
They are ALL money pits for the taxpayers....To damn bad they don’t have to compete with private industry, they would all be out of work!
well let’s see. this certainly is an inflammatory article, but what does it really tell us?
we don’t know how long these people have been at their jobs, nor what they do. we don’t know what the educational requirements are, nor how much continual training they must go through every now adn again.
we don’t know the qualifications to get hired, nor the conditions under which these people labor.
but we have our noses wiped with their salary as if that is the end-all-be-all of the jobs.
propaganda folks. don’t let it rile you up - that what it’s supposed to do.
The DWP also wants to hire another 768 workers to upgrade the power system, and it must compete for those workers against private utilities that can pay even more for skilled workers.
Brian D'Arcy, business manager of IBEW Local 18 that represents 8,080 DWP workers, defended the pay scale and said DWP workers' jobs are unlike any others. "It's a much more industrial environment, much tougher work, more complicated and more skill that's involved. There's not a lot of room for error over here...," D'Arcy said."
The fact is there is a shortage of skilled labor in the utility industries. Competition is fierce between public, private and regional agencies for qualified, certified and trained employees.
Just because LA DWP is a public agency, they don't get a bye on the laws of supply and demand.
I have a cousin who works in middle management at a water & sewer dept of a different city (Not L.A.). You should hear him tell stories of what petty, vindictive, clueless nitwits are in upper management there. I think I’ll attempt to persuade him to write his stories down.
government taxes and burdens with regulations private business
government takes over private business
government creates monopoly for business
government pays highly for loyalty to government
government destroys country.
Wraps up 6,000 years of the history of mankind.
Oh. Los Angeles, lol. Who cares? The people there deserve what they vote for.
By the way, which party does this paper normally endorse for political offices?
The whole department's rotten!
Top to bottom.
Well, I would assume that someone working with high voltage is a higher caliber person and entitled to more money than someone mowing the grass at a city park or pushing papers in an office somewhere.
It's still possible that they're too high, but it doesn't offend me that they're higher than municipal employees on average. I wonder how the pay compares with Edison or PG&E workers.
I agree. Having worked in the public sector, I know that the pay and benefits for *most* jobs are better than what one would get in the private sector but (1) some of that is recompense for the kind of BS that one has to deal with and (2) the pay rates are not what costs the taxpayer a mint, it’s the work rules. Because of the way union contracts are negotiated, most cities have to hire 3-4 people to do the work of one person because of contractual restrictions on the way work gets assigned.
Honestly, a hundred grand a year ain’t as cushy as it sounds in a city where THIS costs $300 grand:
It doesn't matter whether the service provider is a municipality, a private company or a regional agency, they are all run as businesses with the exception that they all have pretty much a monopoly on the local customer base.
Case in point, a relative works for DWP and has since he was 20. He is now 57 and will retire in two years. He will retire at 90% pay. Retirement pension allows for inflation increases. Within 3-5 years his retirement income will surpass his current salary.
Yes, they should get inflationary increases in pension, but the 90% of base is too high of a figure. It should be more like 75% to 80% of the base pay is the maximum that can be achieved in the first year of retirement.
These salaries don’t strike me as unreasonably high. The cost of living in Los Angeles is very high, and many of these jobs involve a combination of skilled labor and lousy locations (tops of electric poles, inside of large sewer pipes, all day in a power plant right under/next to massive high voltage transmission lines, or in a wastewater treatment facilities with tons chemicals and sewage, etc.).
I checked realtor.com and found that the lowest priced 3 bedroom single family home in LA is priced at $219,000 — single story and appears to be no more than a postage stamp sized yard, and right up against if not actually sharing the walls of the neighboring house, and in the infamous “Watts” area. There are only two other 3BR/single family homes currently on the market for less than $250,000 and at least one of those is also in Watts — neither of those have pictures accompanying their listings, suggesting potential buyers might be turned off by the sight of them.
City taxes are probably quite high, leaving take-home pay in the range of 65% of gross. So the average worker making a gross of $77,000 is taking home about $50,000 and with an 80% mortage on one of these rock-bottom homes, including tax and insurance escrow (both probably very high in this area), would face about $25,000 a year in mortgage/tax/escrow payments. I can just imagine what the public schools are like in this neighborhood, so either they’d have to pay a whole lot more to buy a house in a better neighborhood or pay for private school (assuming 2 kids, that would eat up most of what’s left of the take-home pay). The high school is so bad that the school district has given up trying to run it, and is in the process of turning it over to a private company to run as a charter school.
How many FReepers would really be willing to trade their current job and living situation for this one? The city has to entice people to take and stay in these jobs somehow. It sounds like there’s some mismanagement, but that’s probably is attributable mainly to a few high level senior managers, whose salaries have very little impact on the average.
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