OSWEGO COUNTY – At the monthly Oswego County Legislature meeting on Thursday, October 12, two men working in the county’s highway department voiced their concerns over the perceived lack of pay and raises.
Every year, the legislature sets a county budget, which includes the salary for employees across 28 departments such as the district attorney, highway department and planning and community development. Due to inflation over the last three years, which included a 6.5% rate in 2022 and a 3.7% rate in 2023, speakers during the public comment period said they “aren’t paid enough, not even close.”
Currently, the county and department are in the middle of negotiating their next contract.
The highway department completes a variety of jobs, according to the speaker, Zack Hough, ranging from snow removal to replacing blacktop. The work itself is arduous, paving roads in the summer heat and getting up early to clear roads before citizens leave for their own jobs.
“When your roads are plowed in the winter time, and you’re getting to work safely. We rotate new blacktop every summer. We’re breaking our backs, moving blacktop by hand, cutting trees in the winter time, showing up to work at 3 a.m. so you guys can get to work at 6 a.m. safely.”
During the public comment period, Hough urged legislators to join him for a shift to see how grueling it is.
“Come work with me. See how easy it is for a whopping $45 grand a year, base [pay],” Hough said. “I can’t fill my truck without spending $80 minimum [due to rising prices and inflation].”
Since 2019, the salary increase for most positions has been small. After collecting a sample of salaries across the Maintenance of Roads and Bridges and the Machinery departments from 2019 and 2023, the largest percent increase was among the Equipment Mechanic II position in the machinery department. That sample saw a 4.48% increase.
Meanwhile, highway supervisors saw a decrease in pay from $53,710 to $53,685 in the roads and bridges department and $57,796 to $57,177 in the machinery one. Heavy Equipment operators’ salary grew by 3.59%, while Equipment Mechanic I and Medium Equipment operators saw increases of 1.44% and 1.21% respectively.
While there was not much of an increase here, county legislators saw a pretty consistent increase of pay. The chairman, majority and minority leaders and every legislator saw a 15.83% increase in salary over the same timespan.
In terms of real dollars, those increases ranged from $4,561 for the chairman to $2,074 for legislators. The highest increase in salary for the highway department was roughly $2,299 for Equipment Mechanic IIs, while the remaining increases were less than $2,000.
Due to the poor pay, skilled workers are leaving, forcing the department to bring in some underqualified replacements, according to Hough.
“We’re hiring guys that have no idea what’s going on. People are going to get hurt, people have gotten hurt,” Hough said. “Because we don’t pay [anybody] anything, you’re going to get what you pay for. The quality of the work is getting worse and worse, and the guys that have been here for 15-20 years are looking for better paying jobs.”
Due to the on-going contract negotiation, legislators were not able to answer questions from Oswego County Today.
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