My city is hiring SIX part-time people for 3 "FTE" jobs! RANT and plea

[blondeatlast]

(pleas is to union people)

HIRING THEM IN MY OWN OFFICE FOR MY SAME POSITION.

I've been part-time for 6 years while my son grew a bit; now I'm more than ready for full-time.

So they announce they are going to hire for 3 full-time Library Assistants to handle the internet filtering disputes and other electronic reference matters.

So they hire a librarian FT (one), but are hiring 6 pt LAs. God help them they should have to offer our crappy health plan, vacation, and retirement to 3 more people.

I know, I know, I should feel lucky to have a job, but this just frosts me. I've also tried to get benefits for PT workers (even the Library Administration would like this to happen) but NONE of the city unions represent my class of employment, nor do they seem to want to.

GRRRR.

Thanks; I just had to get it out of my system.

Any union people out there? How can I get the various unions who represent us to care about us (and represent my class)? The Library absolutely depends on its PT workers since they are open in the evenings and on weekends; we are the only city agency who relies on PT people. Most of us are damn disgusted, but none of our unions seem to want to even talk to me.

[Misunderestimator]

1. No, you shouldn't feel lucky. That's horrible.

It's just one more way that we allow companies to get away with providing benefits to workers by splitting up jobs that SHOULD be full-time positions. They could do this with almost any job. It should not be legal.

There MUST be something in your union agreement about this... I would hope.

[blondeatlast]

3. Probelm is, my classification apparently doesn't fall under any

of the unions.

I'm considered paraprofessional, but hourly (as a PT worker). I can't figure it out, either!

I'd love to see us have benefits (and actually, so would Library Admin) because then it would be far more cost-effective for the library to hire FT people.

[ArthurDent]

2. Clarify something?

Are you in the union? I can't quite tell.

[blondeatlast]

4. No--I don't seem to qualify.

Explained in the above post, I didn't make it very clear.

City employees are represented by 2 unions, but we don't seem to qualify for any of them.

[mondo joe]

5. Could you please clarify what they're doing?

Your post says "they announce they are going to hire for 3 full-time Library Assistants".

It then says "So they hire a librarian FT (one), but are hiring 6 pt LAs".

Does that mean although they announced hiring 3 full time LAs but now are instead hiring 6 part time LAs AND a full time Librarian with the same pool of $?

Or does the full time librarian have nothing to do with the change?

Were you hoping to get one of the announced full time positions?

[blondeatlast]

6. They figure they can't possibly get a Librarian 2 to work PT, so

it's a given that it's a FT position.

Mind you, we are required to have Bachelor's Degrees plus library experience.

They announced they will fill 3 FTE hours; that's FT employees--that's what city council approved. They can choose to fill with any combination of part time and full time; they chose to fill them entirely with part-time.

And yes, I was hoping to get one of the FT positions.

[mondo joe]

7. Are there no benefits provided to part time employees?

For example, if an employee is .8 fte (32 hrs week) does he or she receive NO benefits?

If he or she is .2 fte (8 hrs per week)?

Is it full time or nothing???

[blondeatlast]

10. FT or nothing.

We are the only city department that has an extensive PT workforce.

[mondo joe]

11. That's astonishing.

NOTHING less than 1.fte gets ANY BENEFITS?????

That's really amazing.

My sympathies.

[Misunderestimator]

8. Now that's alarming. In my work, I consider an FTE position to include

all benefits as part of the money set aside for it. 6 PTEs does not equal 3 FTEs. For example, an FTE may have a salary of say $40,000, but to account for the benefits, it might be considered as $60,000 or $70,000 of the budget. So, they are getting away with paying less than what was approved. 3 x $60,000 (full-time salary w/benes) = $180,000; 6 x $20,000 (1/2 full-time salary w/ no benes) = $120,000.

Where's that $60,000 going?

[mondo joe]

9. That's part of what I was trying to clarify about the librarian

A librarian has a bigger price tag than an assistant so if that took a larger share of the funds that's an explanation.

But what I don't understand is that it's not typical to approve FTEs in budgeting - just to approve $.

So if they approved a $ amount and the announcement was "this is enough for 3 FTEs" that's very different.