Lee Pulaski, lpulaski@shawanoleader.com
Shawano County maintenance employees will continue being paid when they are on-call, despite concerns from some county officials that the perk might skew data being collected for a wage study.
The County Board voted 19-8 Wednesday to continuing giving maintenance employees $5 per day when on-call during the week and $25 per day during the weekend. Being on-call means the employee must remain close to home and sober, ready to respond quickly in case of an emergency.
Maintenance Director Steve Dreher said his department deals with at least one emergency call per week. One emergency in January involved a burst pipe, he said, and if the employee had not been available to respond immediately, it could have cost the county “thousands of dollars” in damage.
The issue of on-call pay was discussed in November when the County Board approved its updated employee handbook. On-call paid was approved for social workers and technology services employees at that time, but the board postponed action for the Maintenance Department.
Supervisor Deb Noffke, who voted against the on-call pay, expressed concern that the issue was resurfacing as the county works on its wage study. When the issue came up at an Administrative Committee meeting Feb. 17, she said, the consultant from Carlson Dettman recommended the issue remain on hold so it would not impact the data being collected.
“We’re screwing up his data,” Noffke said. “Every time we tinker, we’ve made his job harder.”
Dreher admitted the resolution might seem akin to throwing a stick into the wheel spokes, but said previous wage studies have never addressed on-call pay for county employees. He said the maintenance employees are getting on-call pay unofficially, and the funding is within his budget.
Administrative Coordinator Tom Madsen said that if the county was going to stop on-call pay for one department, it should put all on-call pay on hold.
Supervisor Arlyn Tober questioned whether it was necessary to pay $25 per day on the weekend for someone to be available for maintenance emergencies.
“I think that’s kind of excessive. Have you checked into what the other departments are getting?” Tober said.
Supervisor Randy Young said the $50 total weekend pay was not excessive. Weekend on-call is more than 60 hours, from 5 p.m. Friday to 8 a.m. Monday, he said, or about 75 cents per hour.
“This problem would have been solved if we had done one uniform policy for all departments,” Young said.