In today’s edition, a local newspaper(online) showed the salaries of the 18 top-paid city & county employees. One that really stood out is a firefighter making $26K/year – no big deal here. But then it showed that he also took in $210K in overtime and another $29K in other pay. Good enough to land him #8 in the city/county. His overtime pay is about 900% of his salary. WTF? Is that even possible?
shows salaries for San Diego employees. If you look at the firefighter categories, even the lowest paid firefighter (page 38) makes $3275 a month or $39,300 a year.
go to link outa provided and enter the ff’s name. It looks like the guy’s base pay is half of what it was 2 years ago. don’t know how the pay system works, here’s my wild-ass theory: become a part-time worker (hence the smaller base salary), any hours you put in above and beyond that would be counted as overtime?
I was just looking at that yesterday and wondering the exact same thing!
I just restored the spreadsheet that has all the salaries from the recycle bin and if you sort by Total Pay and Benefits, Kyle Kutzke (the fireman) is # 2 in total pay ($271,318) just behind the Chief Operating Officer.
The MSM pulls this stunt at the end of every year. I’m glad to see you guys are looking a little deeper into any anomalies you see among all this sensationalism.
You also can to consider how much a CFO, COO or funds mgr for a very large organization or physician or attorney with 30+ years experience would make on the outside (non-civil service position, in partnership or as a business owner).
I remember a time when civil service was a career path not for large salary but for great benefits and job security. Private industry had the higher wages and lesser benefit packages. Today, seems this trend has reversed.
For example, if the fire service was a private industry career, I’d bet salaries would be in line with other blue collar type jobs. ie. $ 50k And you would still have tons of folks lining up to apply.
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