Somerville got great news earlier this month with the contract agreement between the City and the Somerville Municipal Workers Union (SMEU) Unit B -- one of our largest municipal workers' unit here in Somerville. The agreement, subsequent ratification by membership, and funding of the deal expected shortly conclude a long and frustrating chapter in our labor history. I'm overjoyed to see this agreement reached and am very excited about some important improvements to compensation for some of the lowest-paid City positions, but dismayed at the amount of time it took to do this.
The City of Somerville used to be an employer of choice for workers in the area, with a City job considered a great thing to have. But over time our compensation did not keep up with other municipalities in the region. When SMEA Unit B's contract expired on June 30, 2022, they received only automatic one-percent annual increases each of the last three fiscal years, during a time when inflation was at recent historical highs. This only exacerbated the compensation issue and put the City at a real competitive disadvantage when it came to recruiting and retaining workers.
Uncompetitive municipal employee compensation put the City of Somerville behind the eight ball in a tight labor market coming out of the pandemic. But even when things normalized with the labor market, we still saw City employees leaving their jobs at all levels for better compensation elsewhere -- and continued to have difficulty filling vacancies. To put this in perspective, there were 136 vacancies out of 1,102 jobs on the City of Somerville side -- not counting Somerville Public Schools -- when the FY25's proposed budget was published last May. That means roughly 1 out of every 8 positions on the City side was vacant going into this fiscal year.
This staffing shortage means the City staff who have stuck around despite knowing they could go earn more elsewhere aren't just foregoing money, but in many cases they're having to pick up the workload of vacant positions in their department or division. This is leading to an overworked staff at risk of burnout and harming employee retention.
The union and non-union compensation studies were important pieces of fixing the situation. That's why it's been so distressing to see how longit took to get these study reports back. The wait for the union compensation study is one of the main reasons there will be less than five months left in this new SMEU Unit B contract by the time it actually gets funded by the council. During those years when we were waiting on the compensation studies to come back, we continued to bleed talented staff.
Valuing and supporting workers -- and especially our City workers -- should be a core Somerville value. Bringing our compensation in line with those values at long last is a crucial step to turning things around after years of neglect and degradation. Now the important work begins of rebuilding our depleted municipal workforce. It should be our goal to have a fully-staffed and talented municipal workforce that's envy of the region.
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