Franklin Co. employees won’t have to pay back rescinded raises
Franklin County commissioners approved a countywide 5% cost of living raise for all employees, and an additional $310 increase to their benefits this week.
They also reached a settlement that will keep a group of employees whose raises were rescinded last month from having to pay back the difference.
But those raises will come out to be about half of what 10 clerk’s office employees were expecting to receive under a raise approved just for their department in November.
Interim County Administrator Duane Davidson told the Herald that the county commissioners had approved a settlement with the employees’ union that will keep the employees in the clerk’s office at the center of the dispute from having to make up for the nearly two month pay difference.
Rescinded raises
In November, commissioners approved a two-step pay increase for clerk’s office employees, in a 2-1 vote with Clint Didier and Rocky Mullen in favor of it and Brad Peck voting against it.
County Clerk Michael Killian had requested the increase because he had lost more than half of his employees in the past nine months, he told commissioners at the time. He argued that the main reason employees were leaving was their pay.
Peck later told the Herald he voted against the increase because was concerned with the raise was being given to an individual office without a salary study for all departments.
And he said he worried it would cause friction with other employees who also deserved raises to make their compensation more competitive.
Peck also had concerns about the move not being properly addressed with the union before the vote.
Then in late January, following a closed-door session on potential litigation, the commissioners rescinded the pay bump that employees in the clerk’s office had already started receiving.
Davidson told the Herald this week that a negotiated settlement, finalized Feb. 21, means the workers will not have to pay back that extra money.
It’s unclear exactly how much the difference was, but based on the pay scale increase requests included in the November agenda, it would have ranged from about $340 to $415 a month per employee.
County employee salaries are determined by their pay grade, currently numbered 11 through 18, with each pay grade having 7-steps at each level depending on experience, education and other factors.
The clerk’s office employees are all on full-time, 7.5 hour per day schedules.
The two step increases for the 10 employees in the clerks’ office would have amounted to $4,095 to nearly $5,000 annually depending on the current level of the employees.
Johnson said when the raises were rescinded, the employees rolled back to their previous pay step.
Smaller raises
While they will receive the raises approved this week, that only amounts to about half of what the rescinded increase would have been.
For the clerk employees at grade 13 step 1, that will be almost $2,000 annually rather than the $4,095 they would have received.
For the highest-level worker in that office, the difference will be about $2,400 rather than nearly $5,000.
The county also still plans to conduct a salary survey this year.
Human Resources Director Sam Hughes previously told the Herald she expects that process to take at least six months.
