City of Holyoke rides out minimum wage hikes; 50-plus prosper

    About two years ago, the first minimum wage hike scheduled by Amendment 70 went into effect, raising the floor from $8.31 to $9.30 per hour for untipped workers.
    Now, the state is again bracing as Jan. 1 nears, when the third of four such hikes will raise the minimum wage from $10.20 to $11.10.
    But in spite of growing pains for small businesses, City Clerk Kathy Olofson reported that the City and its roughly 50-person staff of part-time employees working at or within a dollar of minimum wage have weathered the hikes largely unscathed, with no cuts currently planned and seniority-based raises set to continue.
    Olofson said about 80 percent of the City’s at-or-near-minimum wage workforce is employed through Holyoke Swimming Pool, Holyoke Golf Club and Heginbotham Library. Some are seasonal and scattered in other areas like maintenance for the cemetery and streets.
    “We want to give someone who comes back two or three years in a row incentive to come back after we’ve trained them,” she said.
    The City projected that the 2018 wages for the employees working through the pool, golf course and library would total $100,624 — an increase of about $14,000 from 2017.
    The 90-cent hikes scheduled each year for 2018-2020 exceed the ordinary schedule of seniority-based raises, but Olofson qualified the figure by saying Amendment 70 wasn’t the only thing spurring the increase.
    “You can’t blame it all on the minimum wage hikes,” she said, and mentioned that increases could reflect additional certification earned by some employees. For example, lifeguards who are credentialed as water safety instructors through the Red Cross are entitled to higher wages.
    In addition, for positions with tiered pay rates, increasing the wages for the lowest tier affects all of the other positions above it as well.

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