Wichita City Hall minimum wage may come up to $15; state law prohibits citywide hike
Wichita City Hall appears to be moving toward a $15 minimum wage, but it would be for city employees only because the state bans local governments from setting minimum pay for anyone else.
Kansas was one of the last states in America to match the federal minimum, starting in 2009, and had the nation’s lowest minimum wage for years.
It will be a while before the City Hall salary structure could be changed to accommodate a $15 minimum, but after a Wednesday budget workshop where most council members expressed support for the concept, City Manager Robert Layton said he won’t hire anyone at less than that while the policy issues get worked through.
Mayor Brandon Whipple, who fought unsuccessfully for higher minimum wages as a state legislator in the past, said the time has come for the city to take action.
“I think people recognize we’re in a transformational moment,” he said. “We are coming out of the pandemic and really, the market out there (for labor) is more competitive. We want people who want to work for the city and have that public service mindset and can do so without being impoverished.”
He said the people who are underpaid include dozens who were called upon to work difficult jobs and extreme hours responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and flooding emergencies.
“People that we did two weeks in a row of proclamations [for], showing our support and our appreciation for them, some of those it hurts to think that they were making less than 15 bucks an hour,” Whipple said. “So I think this is our moment to, I guess as softly as I can [say it], put our money where our mouth is, by showing we’ll do more than just proclamations.”
Council member Jared Cerullo questioned whether raising the bottom risks flattening the city’s pay scale too much.
“If we raise a clerk position up to $15 an hour, how’s that compare with a starting firefighter salary,” he said. “I’m worried about (wage) compression.”
Starting firefighters make $19.12 an hour, according to the city’s Human Resources Department.
Whipple said he doesn’t see wage compression as an issue.
“I don’t think anyone loses by making sure everyone who works for the city has a livable wage, and can afford to live at a socially acceptable standard in our city,” he said.
City workers only
Whatever the city ends up doing, it will apply to city workers only.
While numerous cities nationwide, including Seattle, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco have set minimum wages at $15 or more, that’s not an option in Kansas, where state law preempts any effort to raise local wages above the state minimum, which currently sits at $7.25, the same as the federal minimum wage.
“Actually, the Kansas Legislature doesn’t allow cities to partake in the creation of minimum wage,” Whipple said. “I was on the (House) Commerce Committee when that bill passed through. It’s really at the state level, so we have to look for what can we do within our organization, within our control, to ensure our employees don’t have to live a life that’s impoverished.”
Whipple did hold out hope that raising the city’s minimum pay would at least put some pressure on low-paying employers, who might have to raise their wages to compete for workers in a tight labor market.
Before 2009, Kansas’ state minimum wage sat at $2.65 an hour for more than 20 years, with efforts to match the federal minimum rejected by conservative legislators who argued that minimum wages are an undue interference in private business.
The impasse finally broke when Republicans began to worry that having the nation’s lowest minimum wage was hurting them at the ballot box for no reason. Most workers already made at least the federal minimum, because only businesses that don’t engage in interstate commerce could pay less than that.
Layton said it would cost approximately $200,000 a year to bring current city workers up to a minimum $15.
The city’s website lists numerous jobs that start at less than $15 including bus mechanic helper, transit van driver, public works laborer and various positions in park, pool and golf course maintenance.
Layton said some of the sub-$15 jobs he’ll need fill soon include clerical positions in the public safety, library and parks departments.
The City Council will need to finalize the budget and union contracts will have to be renegotiated to make the $15 minimum permanent. But Layton said he can work around that for now by hiring new workers at higher tiers on the wage scale.
Union support, concerns
Esau Freeman, the business representative for SEIU Local 513, said he’s been fighting for a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour for more than five years.
While he supports the increase, Freeman said he would like to see it applied equitably. Some longtime city employees still don’t make $15 an hour, he said, adding that if new employees come in at a higher wage floor, the more senior employees should receive a larger raise to above $15 an hour.
“We as a union believe when the least of us do better, we all do better,” he said.
The union covers employees in public works, police records, municipal court, the water and sewer departments and more. It also includes administrative assistants, custodians and animal control officers.
Another concern for Freeman is bringing back the 60 to 80 union workers he says the city laid off in the last year during the pandemic.
Most of the laid-off employees worked with Century II, but the city is also short staffed in the parks department and animal control, Freeman said.
“I stand behind it (the wage increase),” Freeman said. “But I don’t see how they’re gonna do it when they can’t even staff the adequate number of people to do the city’s work.”
Freeman said if he had to choose between bringing workers back on the payroll or seeing the base wage increase, he’s not sure what route the union would take.
“How we pay our workers and take care of our city workers really says something about us as a city and what we invest in,” Freeman said.
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 4:28 PM.
