{"id":41033,"date":"2024-01-17T14:38:27","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T19:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=41033"},"modified":"2024-01-17T14:38:34","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T19:38:34","slug":"the-city-of-lakeland-screws-some-city-employees-with-wage-decreases-after-pay-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/01\/17\/the-city-of-lakeland-screws-some-city-employees-with-wage-decreases-after-pay-study\/","title":{"rendered":"The City of Lakeland screws some city employees with wage decreases after pay study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lakeland’s employees in supervisor positions have been left unfairly and negatively impacted by the city’s implementation of its recent wage study, according to a Lakeland Electric employee.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Last fall, Jeff Saenz’s job title changed to electric system operator supervisor from chief electric system operator when Lakeland implemented a series of job and wage compensation changes due to its pay study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These changes turned Saenz’s non-exempt position with mandatory 12-hour work shifts to an “exempt” employee under the federal Fair Labor Standard Acts. His hours were changed to four 10-hour shifts with no overtime pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reduced Saenz’s annual wages by $18,000 a year before taxes, or about $1,500 a month.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saenz said he has spoken with other Lakeland Electric and city employees in supervisory roles to find they too had been “unjustly affected by this monumental pay study.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on this study, City Manager Shawn Sherrouse suggested several changes to wages and compensation for the city’s general employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sherrouse said those employees identified as being paid less than a competitive market rate would receive a pay adjustment with the average individual adjustment being no greater than 5%. There would appear to be some outliers, Sherrouse warned, where particular individuals may receive up to a 20% adjustment, but he said the average adjustment will be less than 5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city’s implementation of the wage study resulted in 37 positions changing from non-exempt to exempt from overtime \u2014 including Saenz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

City commissioners approved a 3% across-the-board pay raise and a 2.5% to 3% merit-based increase to general union employees for fiscal year 2024. Saenz said this has resulted in situations where those in supervisory roles are being paid less than those they oversee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lakeland’s employees in supervisor positions have been left unfairly and negatively impacted by the city’s implementation of its recent wage study, according to a Lakeland Electric employee. Last fall, Jeff Saenz’s job title… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[7303],"class_list":["post-41033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-the-city-of-lakeland-screws-some-city-employees-with-wage-decreases-after-pay-study"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41034,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41033\/revisions\/41034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}