A former training officer with Halifax parking enforcement is speaking out publicly about the starvation wages being paid to the 10 officers who patrol downtown streets in Halifax and Dartmouth.
Forty-seven-year-old Paul Keast says Securitas, the company which took over parking enforcement last September 1st, is forcing out officers earning $11 an hour and replacing them with new recruits who are paid the minimum wage of $8.10. When Securitas won the contract last summer, it offered to keep any officers then employed by the Corps of Commissionaires who agreed to a cut in pay from $12.50 to $11.00.
Eight of the officers joined Securitas but Keast says all but two of them, including him, have since been fired or forced out. Keast is now back with the Corps of Commissionaires working as a security officer at the Halifax Port Authority. He says morale is low among new Securitas recruits who must qualify for special constable status in order to write parking tickets, but who are then paid only about $324 a week. However, the city itself appears pleased with the new arrangement. A city spokesperson says foot patrol officers employed by Securitas handed out 6,000 more parking tickets this fall than a year earlier. If true, that means the city is getting more revenue while the officers work harder for less pay.
Shawn Deeley, local branch manager with Securitas, the world’s largest private security company, failed to respond to several phone messages this week.
[Today’s Reality Bites post is an update on Bruce Wark’s previous editorial, Slashing patrol pay]
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2009.
“If true, that means the city is getting more revenue while the officers work harder for less pay. ”
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Or that previous officers were under performing while being over paid?
Depends on what angle you’re looking at it from.
Ultimately, if the pay isn’t fair for the work it entails, then a natural adjustment will occur because, arguably, Securitas won’t be able to find people who would be willing to do that job for that kind of pay.
Yet, evidence is suggesting otherwise: performance is up, and supply of qualified employees willing to accept the offered level of pay is adequate.
Oh my god, this is every journalists’ nightmare. You work for a week gathering the facts that show workers are being grossly underpaid and then someone like issmat breezes in from another planet mumbling about “a natural adjustment” which substitutes so-called market economics for social justice. Issmat, why don’t you spend a week investigating why workers sign up for the Securitas parking job even though it pays shit? The trouble is, businesses will *always* be able to find workers to work for extremely low wages. That’s why we developed labour laws, minimum wages and unions.
The real question is, why is the city paying its workers minimum wage? Do you think minimum wage is a fair wage? I don’t. And since HRM is a public body, it should strive to pay a decent wage. HRM is not Wal-Mart or the Cheap-Crap Corporation. It needs to set the example for private sector employers, and pay its workers fairly. And any way you slice it, $8.10 an hour is not a fair wage, especially when you consider that these parking enforcement workers bring in more than $3.5 million every year to HRM coffers.
Issmat, for what it’s worth, almost all security guards in HRM get paid less than $10/hr. Some armored truck guards may get paid more…albeit not much more. Since security guards do not in fact require any education or training whatsoever, contrary to popular belief, market forces ensure that the wages paid are very low, and there is no shortage of unskilled people that need these kinds of crappy jobs.
“Qualified” employees…I had to laugh. Can you talk, walk and read at a junior-high level? Yes? You’re qualified to be a security guard.
I’m reminded of the brilliant Atlantica plan to use Mexican truck drivers instead of locals, so we don’t have to pay them much.
That way we all get rich! Well, except for the truck drivers. And the people who sell things to the truck drivers. And the governments that rely on truck driver taxes.
Well, OK. Some dude in an office gets rich.
Why all the hubbub over something that HRM has been doing for some time now (that being: outsourcing the workforce)? The people at the waste facility get paid less than 12 an hour to sort what amounts to handling hazardous materials (a job that firefighters in Haz-Mat teams get paid two or three times the hourly wage for) for 14 hours a day? HRM knows they can get away with it and they don’t care, revenues are up, costs are down and both city and corporation are happy.
Bruce, my comment wasn’t meant to slight Tim’s work here. This is a discussion, and you can’t deny that there are two sides to this wages coin. I’m not sure why the crucifix should come out if one dares to note or justify the existence of a different side.
Your statement that “businesses will always be able to find workers to work for extremely low wages” is easy rhetoric. What kind of workers for what kind of business??
I guarantee you that if a company has a need for senior computer programmers, they will be hard pressed to ‘always find workers’ to program for ‘extremely low wages’.
If tomorrow The Coast decided that Tim Bousquet was to be paid half the wage he makes now, but continue to produce the same work, you think Tim will accept working for that wage?
Do you believe that anyone off the street who has the qualifications to do Tim’s job will take the position and accept being paid half of Tim’s wage? Will The Coast allow the office janitor to assume the job, even if he agrees to do the job for less than half of Tim’s wage?
Now, a rational person would say that Tim would accept none less than what his skill is worth (or in that range), and that rational people with Tim’s level of skill and experience would do the same, and that The Coast would not turn its newsroom to the control of the janitorial staff because they ‘can pay them extremely low wages and get away with it’.
This is where the notion of “qualified worker” comes into question, as touched upon by Realist in Dartmouth. To that extent, and until the real world proves otherwise, everyone with a certain set of skills will continue to be paid based on a formula that primarily includes:
– the skill required
– the number of people with that skill
– the number of jobs available for that skill
Notice that ‘social justice’ isn’t an item on that list, since you can’t quantify that in dollars and cents in any consistent way to be fair to all workers in that skill set, and to the employer (who need to operate with a certain profit margin in order to stay open and continue to offer those jobs in the first place).
In exchange for the amount of education and skill required for a parking enforcer to perform his/her job, what is ‘just’ from the point of view of one parking officer may be to have a lifestyle that affords her a car, house, flat screen tv, trip to cuba with the spouse every couple of years, and money to send the kids to university.
What is ‘just’ to another officer is to be able to afford rent and bills for a small apartment and have food on the table plus some playing around money.
What is ‘just’ to the employer is to offer a wage that reflects the above formula, while adhering to current market forces (which include government regulations regarding worker equity).
As much as some people might feel the need to conjure up a single entity to blame for their dissatisfaction, none of the above forces are simply the work of “the man”. This simple scapegoat of “some dude… sitting in his office… getting rich”. What dude in what office? Show him to me and I’ll send my dog after him. If we get rid of him, does that mean we can all have large flat screens and own a house? Sign me up!
It’s a balancing act, with a distinct point of natural societal equilibrium at any given point of time. Market forces don’t dictate it, they simply attempt to explain it.
Interesting points. Both have valid points. But alas when one realizes the dire circumstances of some of these “qualified workers” maybe mega corporations or city organizations could have some sort of Compassion on them. Just because they CAN pay them weak wages doesn’t mean they should. I once sat in a Training meeting with the Securistas Gaurds and was explicitly told that Securitas is unlike other companys in where they take care of their own. What a load of….
My point being is if the Company Can’t take care of their gaurds and the city can’t take care of their populace (gaurds) then who cares right? thats the mentality? Pretty lame if you ask me.
Take this for example. A Gaurd works at a bank assigned to Securitas for protection. Now this is an actual fact. He monitors cameras all night to make sure there are no problems and gets paid 8.75 an hr. Now apparently hes protecting the assets of many people and also the bank. What kind of risk is he in? Now another gaurd working at an Abandoned School gets paid 10 bux an hr to breathe in mold and Asbestos all night with no company protection aka masks. so I tell you from experience: The company doesnt give a s… and neither does the city. I say something should be done for these people! And anyone that puts on an economical and supply/demand eye on the situation…as far as i can see… your up there with the rest of the scum in this world : )!
Does anyone else feel the same way i do? I Heard that if a gaurd attempted to organize some sort of plea for change they’d be fired and replaced quickly by another “expendable” “qualified worker”.
Shawn Deeley was run out of British Columbia after a long string of thefts, fraud and suspected child fondling of his children and nephews. It’s no surprise that his past has caught up to him, even after his failed attempt to hide on the other side of the country. The guy deserves to be in prison, cuddling with his bunk-mates.