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Hospital Uses Executive Bonus Money to Give its Workers A Raise

posted by martyb on Tuesday June 17 2014, @08:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the take-it-from-the-top dept.

gewg_ writes:

Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas[1] will raise its own minimum wage to $10.25 an hour next month...
The wage increase will cost the hospital about $350,000 a year. The expense will be covered with money from the upcoming quarter's bonus pool for the hospital's 60 vice presidents and top executives.

After this, every worker employed by Dallas County will make at least $10.25 an hour (still not a living wage by many measures).
Note also that this will barely put a dent in that pool, expected to be at least $3M for the year.

[1] People who have memories of November 22, 1963 will remember that as a historic location

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by RaffArundel on Tuesday June 17 2014, @02:22PM

    by RaffArundel (3108) on Tuesday June 17 2014, @02:22PM (#56388) Homepage

    If you are going to use the numbers from 2011, keep in mind the average rent was $794 according to http://www.city-data.com/city/Dallas-Texas.html [city-data.com] but I don't have a quick source for median income for 2014, but you are welcome to post it.

    I got "Estimated median household income in 2011: $40,585" So assume a two earner household (room mate, couple, nuclear family, etc) and further more make the rather optimistic assumption two adults means two employed adults (LOL that is so not true, there aren't enough jobs, but...) that means the median worker in TX gets $20250 per year.

    Median household income is obviously by household, so simply dividing by 2 is not a fair representation. The per capita income in 2011 was $25k. The question was: is it a living wage? I am fortunate, so I don't know how hard the budgeting that amount is, but as I asked in the title - Perspective? I think $25k in the Dallas area is probably better than $30-35k in many other areas where I lived.

    I would be fairly mystified about the lower transportation expenses in TX because in urban CA there's supposedly decent cheap public transit, but in TX everyone feels the need to drive a 8 MPG F-350 dualie 15 miles to the nearest convenience store.

    They do? I can't recall seeing one in recent memory which didn't have a company logo on the side. I suspect there is some stereotyping going on - the highways around here are awash with Prius not Hummers. Transportation prices are lower because fuel costs are lower.

    I know public transit is expensive, but is it really that much more expensive? That does make the other figures look a little "weird". Also WRT cost of living I'm sure Amazon doesn't discount your purchases by 75% merely because the shipping zip is poorer, I know cars and gasoline cost the same, food is "about the same" other then the effect of cost of store rent and cost of employee labor.

    We are probably not the best demographic to discuss this, but people don't get their toilet paper from Amazon. As previously mentioned, neither gas nor food is "about the same" according to CNN. I am mildly surprised that utilities run higher, but that just encourages people to use less, which I am all for. I don't live there, so I don't use public transportation but the DART has some very good coverage. I don't know how utilized it is, so I won't speculate.

    It does clearly show the destruction of the middle class, where $10/hr is now the median. So half the population is worse off (OMFG) and half is better off (the 60 VPs splitting an enormous bonus pool).

    You won't get an argument from me regarding the state of the middle class - but throwing around those numbers without accounting for cost of living skews the real issue. My point wasn't that at all regardless, it was putting things in perspective. So, instead of a $50k bonus, these executives get ~45k and the 5k drop in their bonus goes to the workers, who now get ~1.5k more a year. You may think it is not enough, but this is a good thing. The summary makes it look like they should not have bothered or worse, that this is a bad thing.

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