After COVID struck, the annual raises given to Durham city workers were lower than the inflation rate for three years in a row. The period of real-terms pay cuts, given that wages were already low, devastated municipal employees and city departments. The worst case is the Department of Public Works, where 68 percent of positions are empty.
Raises were skipped in FY20–21 and were unusually low in FY21–22. While raises were normal in FY22–23 they were still lower than inflation. In each of these fiscal years, the City Council added millions of dollars to Durham’s rainy day fund, which hit a record-high of $76.5 million in FY22–23.
City workers have organized a response. Solid Waste workers, represented by UE Local 150, pulled off a successful strike in September 2023. The City Council will be deciding the FY24–25 budget in June 2024, and a progressive coalition is pushing them to raise city workers’ pay to $25 per hour.
Wage Austerity, Vacancy Rates, Fiscal Conditions
According to the US Inflation Calculator, inflation has been about 20 percent since 2020 [1]. That has overwhelmed the annual raises of Durham city workers, who are split into three groups — general employees, police, and firefighters. There is a fourth group of “open range” employees but this represents a smaller number of well-paid management and technical positions.
The three main groups are in pretty much the same boat — the value of their wages has shrunk. Here is a quote about the situation for general employees in the Department of Public Works:
“Over the past four years, wages for public works employees in Durham, who are overwhelmingly African-American, have increased by 15 percent while inflation has risen by 23 percent.” — Payday Report, September 2023 [2]
Firefighters have been treated in almost the same way. Their pay has gone up 16 percent in the last four years. That is a four percent cut in real-terms pay, according to the US Inflation Calculator numbers.
FY16–17 [3a, pg. 8], FY17–18 [3b, pg. 4], FY18–19 [3c, pg. 5], FY19–20 [3d, pg. 4], FY20–21 [3e, pg. 3], FY21–22 [3f, pg. 3], FY22–23 [3g, pg. 13], FY23–24 [3h, pg. 15]
Recently, the City Council had an opportunity to mend fences with at least one group of workers. In June 2023, former Mayor Elaine O’Neal introduced a motion to give firefighters “reclassifications” that were skipped during COVID. The measure would have set aside $8 million to raise their wages.
Council members DeDreanna Freeman, Monique Hosley-Hyman, and former mayor Elaine O’Neal voted in favor, but the motion was defeated by a four-member majority — Mark Antony-Middleton, Javiera Caballero, Jillian Johnson, and current mayor Leonardo Williams [4].
“I think they needed to know. Straight up,” Mayor O’Neal after the motion was voted down. “Sometimes, you can just make it simple.”
Low pay and low raises have led to high vacancy rates in many city departments. The Department of Public Works has the worst rate of empty roles (68 percent), but Emergency Communications (23 percent), Police (21 percent), Solid Waste (11 percent), and Fire (9 percent) are also plagued by the issue.
Public Works, 68 percent as of October 2023 [5] / Emergency Communications Center, 23 percent as of March 2024 [6] / Police, 21 percent as of March 2024 [7] / Solid Waste (collections positions*) [8], 11 percent as of March 2024 / Fire, nine percent as of August 2023 [9]
While raises were withheld from city workers, tens of millions of dollars piled into Durham’s rainy day fund. City workers got no annual raise at all in FY20–21, so although inflation was quite low their wages still lost value. In the same year, Durham poured $9.9 million into the “general fund unassigned fund balance,” also known as the rainy day fund.
The City Council’s move to freeze wages went against economic orthodoxy, which calls for higher public spending during crises to stimulate the weakened private sector. From a moral point of view, denying a raise to these essential workers was outrageous. In the course of their work, municipal employees exposed themselves and their families to huge risks and got a real-terms pay cut for their trouble.
The next year, city workers got two to four percent raises, below the pre-COVID norm. Inflation spiked to seven percent, making FY21–22 the worst year of wage austerity. Meanwhile, the City Council added $11.5 million to the rainy day fund, the largest increase in six years.
Whatever the City Council's intentions, their policy created a massive pool of money for whatever programs they wished to establish or fund, and did so on the backs of the city’s workforce.
FY22–23 was the last year of real-terms pay cuts. Annual raises for city workers went back to the normal level, but 6.5 percent inflation erased the gains. Millions of dollars continued to flow into the rainy day fund, which reached an all-time peak of $76.5 million.
FY16–17 [10a, pg. 156], FY17–18 [10a, pg. 157], FY18–19 [10a, pg. 157], FY19–20 [10a, pg. 157], FY20–21 [10a, pg. 157], FY21–22 [10a, pg. 24], FY22–23 [10b, pg. 5]
Not all of it could really be spent. Durham prefers that the rainy day fund not fall below 16.75 percent of general fund spending, although the state only requires 13 percent. At the FY22–23 peak, the fund was $35.6 million above the minimum level. After June 2023, the $35.6 million excess in the rainy day fund started to drop — to $32 million, then $18 million, then $11 million.
“The general fund has about $32 million in reserves above the money it needs to have on hand, according to the latest figures ... Nearly $14 million was allocated in the budget approved in July [2023], leaving about $18 million to work with.” — News and Observer, September 2023 [11]
In October 2023, the City Council approved $1,000 to 5,000 bonuses in response to a strike by Solid Waste workers, a concession that cost $6.5 million [12]. That money could have been used earlier to give normal raises, probably avoiding the strike’s disruption to workers and the community.
FY16–17 [3b, pg. 4], FY17–18 [3b, pg. 4], FY18–19 [3d, pg. 5], FY19–20 [3d, pg. 5], FY20–21 [3f, pg. 4], FY21–22 [3f, pg. 4], FY22–23 [3h, pg. 16], FY23–24 [3h, pg. 16]
New Programs Established During Wage Austerity
During the three years of wage austerity, the City Council started new programs like HEART, which stands for Holistic, Empathetic, Assistance, Response Teams (HEART). The program, established in July 2022, sends unarmed social workers to emergency calls that don’t require a police officer. The budget for the HEART program is currently $6.4 million, a sum that has grown quickly since the program was established [13].
HEART is a great concept that the City Council was right to create and fund. It is a serious answer to the demands for less militarized public safety that rose up during the Black Lives Matter movement. However, the timing of the program’s creation shows that City Council had money it was willing to spend on recurring annual expenditures that could have been used for city workers’ annual raises.
Solid Waste - Solidarity Sparks Action
Workers in the Department of Solid Waste Management conducted a "stand down" in September 2023 [5].
“They refused to load the city’s trucks, leaving trash and recycling bins at the curb, prompting the city to send independent contractors on their routes.” — News and Observer [12]
Showing remarkable solidarity, the Solid Waste workers made demands on behalf of all city workers and not just themselves — that all city workers should get a $5,000 bonus, pay for work outside of their job title, and all temporary workers should be hired on a permanent basis [14].
The strike was technically illegal due to pro-corporate laws in North Carolina, but the City Council chose not to enforce the legislation. The Solid Waste workers went on to secure a partial victory. In October 2023, the City Council voted unanimously to give all city workers bonuses between $1,000 to 5,000, with larger sums given to those with lower pay [12].
Though a welcome development, the October 2023 bonus did not resolve the root problems of low pay and low raises. The one-time payment will help workers pay some bills, but won't help recruit or retain employees. Unless those insufficient pay and raises are corrected in the FY24–25 budget, Durham will continue to lose skilled and experienced workers, with an effect on institutional memory that is not so easily repaired.
Photo credit: UE Local 150
Emergency Comms
The Durham Emergency Communications Center (DECC) answers 911 calls. As of February 2024, the department had a 23 percent vacancy rate, which sounds terrible but in fact is a huge improvement [6]. The rate of empty roles was 42 percent in August 2021 [15]. The problems in Emergency Comms, such as high turnover, could likely be solved by paying a living wage.
New coverage about Emergency Comms may have been the first time many Durham residents learned that city departments were being hollowed out. On the night of August 18, 2021, six people were shot at McDougald Terrace. Residents that they’d called 911 six times before anyone answered, causing a scandal and forcing the mayor to apologize [16].
Emergency Comms has improved since then, but problems remain. An industry standard is that 911 call centers need to answer 90 percent of calls in ten seconds or less. Durham has not met that standard in any month since at least 2022. For example, in December 2023 the percent of calls answered in the proper time was 79.2 percent. However, DECC improved to 89.9 percent in February 2024, close to an acceptable level [6].
Image credit: Durham Emergency Communications Center [6]
Positions at Emergency Comms do not pay well. New hires started with a salary of $39,000 as of January 2023 [17]. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a worker in Durham needs to earn about $58,000 if their family is made up of two working adults and two children [18]. The wide gap between need and reality fuels a 65 percent turnover rate (as of June 2022) — three times the national average for 911 call centers [19].
“99 employees were hired to work at the DECC from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2022, and during that same time frame, 81 employees quit.” — CBS 17, July 2022 [19]
Fast turnover has simple causes like insufficient pay and raises. However, the problem manifests in complex ways. A few workers retire early, others change fields, or employees can be poached by cities that offer fair pay.
Fire Department
Firefighters at the Durham Fire Department are unionized but the local chapter was never considered very active. That has begun to change.
“Blue-collar city workers, the majority of whom are Black, have united with firefighters and their union, Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 668, who have been mobilizing around similar issues.” — Labor Notes, October 2023 [5]
Firefighters in Durham are paid much less than their peers in nearby cities. Starting pay is about $41,000, comparing poorly with Raleigh ($47,000) or Apex ($51,000). It’s a wonder that loss of staff to other cities isn’t a worse issue. Only seven firefighters left for other departments in FY22–23 [20].
Photo credit: Durham Fire Department
Durham’s firefighters may have been relatively non-militant, but everyone has their breaking point. When the City Council held hearings on the FY23–24 budget in June 2023, firefighters in attendance blasted their low pay in searing terms.
“Do you think $14 an hour is enough compensation to show up first to an emergency scene then run across I-85 with a jump bag to start CPR on a 6-month-old infant who had been ejected over the overpass?” — Firefighter quoted by WRAL News [21]
In August 2023, the Fire Department had 38 open roles out of 425 [22]. That isn’t as shocking as the rate in Public Works or Emergency Comms, but it has still caused issues like fast turnover and heavy overtime.
“[Durham Fire Chief Robert] Zoldos says out of the 35 people who left this year, seven went to other departments, 10 went to other fields, eight moved out of the area and 10 retired or were dismissed for other reasons.” — Spectrum News 1, August 2023 [22]
During COVID, Fire Department spending on overtime pay went up dramatically. In FY19–20, $560,000 was spent on overtime pay. That number spiked to $1.3 million in FY20–21 [23]. The overtime bonanza may be softening the issue of low pay, but heavy overtime takes a toll on family life, making the job unattractive to many. Furthermore, the City Council decision to withhold raises makes no sense if the money is spent on overtime anyway.
“[We] asked [Durham] where in the budget they found the money to pay for the overtime. The [city] said they used the money they had saved from having so many vacancies.” — WRAL News, July 2022
Close
Annual raises for Durham city workers were skipped in FY20–21, unusually low in FY21–22, and below the rate of inflation in FY22–23. During the period of wage austerity, the City Council added tens of millions of dollars to the city’s rainy day fund.
As a result, several city departments have been plunged into dysfunction. Solid Waste, Emergency Comms, and others are plagued by issues like labor unrest, heavy overtime, fast turnover, high vacancy rates and more.
A progressive coalition is pushing the City Council to raise city workers’ pay to at least $25 per hour in the FY24–25 budget. Get involved with the campaign by following these groups on social media or subscribing to their newsletters:
Work Cited
1. US Inflation Calculator. “Current US Inflation Rates: 2000–2024.” US Inflation Calculator | Easily Calculate How the Buying Power of the U.S. Dollar Has Changed From 1913 to 2023. Get Inflation Rates and U.S. Inflation News., 12 Mar. 2024, www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates.
2. Elk, Mike. “Durham Public Works Employees Illegally Strike for 1st Time.” Payday Report, 6 Sept. 2023, paydayreport.com/durham-public-works-employees-illegally-strike-for-1st-time.
3. Durham’s Adopted Budgets, FY16–17 until FY23–34
3a. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2016–2017.” www.durhamnc.gov, 20 June 2016, www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/11260/Budget-book-pages-for-web?bidId=
3b. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2017–2018.” www.durhamnc.gov, 19 June 2017, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/15890/FY-2017-2018-Budget-PDF?bidId=
3c. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2018–2019.” www.durhamnc.gov, 18 June 2018, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/22131/FY-2018-19-Adopted-Budget
3d. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2019–2020.” www.durhamnc.gov, 17 June 2019, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/27412/FY20-Final-Budget
3e. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2020–2021.” www.durhamnc.gov, 15 June 2020, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/32352/FY21-Final-Budget-Book?bidId=
3f. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2021–2022.” www.durhamnc.gov, 21 June 2021, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/39290/FY22-Adopted-Budget-Book?bidId=
3g. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2022–2023.” www.durhamnc.gov, 16 May 2022, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/46235/Final-FY23-Budget-Book
3h. City of Durham Finance Department. “City of Durham, North Carolina Budget Fiscal Year 2023–2024.” www.durhamnc.gov, 15 May 2023, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/52197/Fiscal-Year-2023-24-Adopted-Budget
4. Moore, Mary Helen. “Durham’s Budget Passes at Fiery Meeting. What Each City Council Member Had to Say. Read More at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article276583981.html#storylink=cpy.” www.newsobserver.com, 21 June 2023, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article276583981.html.
5. Carroll, Ben. “North Carolina Sanitation Workers Strike for $5K Bonuses.” Labor Notes, 6 Oct. 2023, labornotes.org/2023/10/north-carolina-sanitation-workers-strike-5k-bonuses.
6. An Inside Look at Durham 911 | Durham, NC. www.durhamnc.gov/3964/Durham-911-Stats-Updates#data.
7. Durham Police Data, Statistics, and Reports | Durham, NC. www.durhamnc.gov/4743/Durham-Police-Data-Statistics-and-Report.
8. Fall 2023 City Employee Compensation and Solid Waste Collections Update | Durham, NC. www.durhamnc.gov/5134/Fall-2023-City-Employee-Compensation-and.
9. Panetta, Kyleigh. “Durham Firefighter Advocates for Higher Pay as City Launches Compensation Study.” Spectrum News 1 Charlotte, 23 Aug. 2023, spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/08/23/durham-firefighter-advocating-for-higher-pay-as-city-works-on-compensation-study.
10. Durham’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports, FY21–22 and FY-22–23
10a. City of Durham Finance Department. “Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, City of Durham North Carolina, for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2022.” www.durhamnc.gov, 11 Nov. 2022, https://www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/47665/Annual-Comprehensive-Financial-Report-2022.
10b. City of Durham Finance Department. “Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, City of Durham North Carolina, for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2023.” www.durhamnc.gov, 15 Nov. 2023, www.durhamnc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/53560/CITY-OF-DURHAM-FY23-ACFR---FINAL.
11. Moore, Mary Helen. “Garbage Workers Strike for Third Day; Durham Residents Told to Keep Trash on the Curb.” www.newsobserver.com, 12 Sept. 2023, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article279063974.html.
12. Moore, Mary Helen. “City Workers Declare Victory After Durham OKs Bonuses. Here’s What They’ll Get.” www.newsobserver.com, 5 Oct. 2023, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article280117114.html.
13. HEART Program — Participedia. 28 June 2022, participedia.net/case/12955.
14. Durham City Workers Deserve $5000 Bonus and Respect! | Southern Vision Alliance PowerBase. southernvision.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=93&reset=1.
15. Blackwell, Penelope. “‘Seconds Save Lives.’ but for Some Durham 911 Callers, the Seconds Are Adding Up.” Raleigh News and Observer, 1 Sept. 2021, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article253797173.html.
16. “Unanswered 911 calls and ‘the kind of scream that makes your soul shake.’” Raleigh News and Observer, 19 Aug. 2021, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article253622368.html.
17. Krueger, Sarah, et al. “Nearly Half 911 Operational Positions Are Vacant in Durham.” WRAL.com, 5 Jan. 2023, www.wral.com/story/nearly-half-911-operational-positions-are-vacant-in-durham/20656403.
18. Living Wage Calculator — Living Wage Calculation for Durham County, North Carolina. livingwage.mit.edu/counties/37063.
19. Price, Crystal. “Durham 911 employees are leaving at 4 times the rate of other dispatch centers nationwide, new audit shows.” CBS 17, 18 July 2022, www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/durham-county-news/durham-911-employees-are-leaving-at-4-times-the-rate-of-other-dispatch-centers-nationwide-new-audit-shows.
20. “Durham Firefighters Urge City Council to Increase Pay, Say They Can’t Afford to Live in City.” ABC11 Raleigh-Durham, 8 June 2023, abc11.com/durham-firefighters-firefighter-pay-city-council/13356375.
21. Bergin, Mark, and Monica Casey. “Durham Firefighter Union Chief: Pay Raises ‘anything but a Victory.’” WRAL.com, 21 June 2023, www.wral.com/story/durham-firefighter-union-chief-pay-raises-anything-but-a-victory/20919869.
22. “Durham Firefighter Advocates for Higher Pay as City Launches Compensation Study.” Spectrum News 1 Charlotte, 23 Aug. 2023, spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/08/23/durham-firefighter-advocating-for-higher-pay-as-city-works-on-compensation-study.
23. Krueger, Sarah, Mark Bergin, et al. “Durham, Raleigh Fire Departments Spend Combined $5.1 Million in Overtime Pay During Past Year.” WRAL.com, 2 July 2022, www.wral.com/story/durham-raleigh-fire-departments-spend-combined-5-1-million-in-overtime-pay-during-past-year/20357138.
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