yes, there is much money to be saved… from the motoring public.
but, again, Senor Beef really put it perfectly. the beef and issue really isn’t with this particular agency which runs a surplus and is financially independent from the state coffers. it’s the fact that a $31 an hour wage has occurred through whatever processes are at play.
The fact that the top-tier pay is $31/hour is not particularly interesting in and of itself. What is more of interest (at least to me) is: how many people are at that tier? What’s the average salary of a toll collector? What’s the cost of living in NJ?
I have seen speculation from the OP in this thread that “everybody” makes it to the top tier and that regular joes can’t get these jobs due to cronyism, but those comments appear to be just that: speculation. I could make up a fantasy about this topic and share it also (“only 1% of toll collectors make $31/hr! The other 99% have to be on food stamps because NJ is so expensive! I just made that up but it sounds plausible, right?”) but I think facts would be more interesting. If anyone has any, that is.
Senor Beef just said that they should be paid the minimum amount possible while still being able to keep bodies in the booths. Do you have any evidence that’s not the case? Toll booth workers all over the country seem to be getting paid a grip. Gov Kasich was just whining about this in Ohio the other day. Something about $66k a year.
Are there other functioning toll roads in areas with similar costs of living where toll collectors are paid comfortably less?
You’ll notice that this does not, in fact, answer my question. What exactly is that “lowest wage you can pay out while retaining adequate staff”? Or are you (and the OP) just saying, “I dunno how much they should be paid, but this is too high”? If so, what makes you qualified to make this judgement?
I’m not defending it, as I don’t think the pay actually needs defending at all. I sure as hell don’t want to do it, even for 31 bucks an hour. Maybe a bit higher than that, and I’d be tempted. If they *could *pay less, they *would *pay less, unions notwithstanding. Sounds kind of like capitalism in action, to me.
If you think they’re being overpaid, can we assume you’ve already sent off an application? It sounds like you think it’s easy money- so why aren’t you carving off a hunk of that cheese?
I don’t know what you guys are all up in arms about. Texas schoolteachers and Wisconsin civil servants have got to find good-paying jobs somewhere!
:rolleyes:
No, my comment is not pure speculation. Do you have any evidence to suggest that toll collectors are promoted by a meritocracy, which would be in stark contrast to most other public union jobs. Do you have any evidence to suggest that toll collectors don’t have job security as a result of collective bargaining, which again would be in stark contrast to most other public union jobs?
And, finally, again - the actual payroll figures aren’t what is flabbergasting here. It’s the fact that such a wage rate exists for such a job, and what processes lead to that.
The cost of living in NJ is a red herring, also. Yes, it would be nice if everyone’s job paid enough to give everyone an average income. But, that’s not reality. And these people are getting paid, approximately, a 50th percentile income for a job which is clearly not in the median in terms of skill, ability, boringness, monotony, dreckfulness, or any other measure of a job.
I’m still not convinced that $31.00 an hour is what toll booth operators make. I’m sorry to say that if a Republican said that’s what they make, then I’m not inclined to believe them without some proof.
But, if it is, I’m also trying to square that with conservative values.
Conservatives say they value nuclear families, male head-of-households, and stay-at-home moms. How can a family of four live that way if the male makes only $10-12 dollars an hour? I don’t have a problem with paying people a living wage. Wouldn’t a $10 to $12 dollar an hour job place a family of four below the Federal Poverty Level? Wouldn’t those lazy slackers then qualify for Federal benefits?
Well that depends? Are you talking a union job or a non-union job.
http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/983
this is from 2005. I don’t recall there being any labor problems on the Skyway the last time I drove through.
That’s the beauty (heavy sarcasm) of it, at least here in Pennsylvania. I suppose for some of the jobs here, if you knew someone that actually worked for the civil service commission itself (NOT the agency you are applying for), then you might have a chance of abusing cronyism. Other than that, you’d be SOL for sure in that dept.
They do that at interviews, but being among those selected for an interview is no easy task, and for many positions it is entirely based on your score on an examination. I have no idea how it works for toll workers, but I’m just going on my experience here.
The bottom line is that many of these union jobs are civil service, and that you would have to actually have to be “in” with the person flipping through the test scores. In fact, I’m pretty sure that this is almost entirely electronic (besides stuffing the envelopes), but there is actually very little cronyism involved with many of these civil service positions. Like I said, I can’t speak for a specific job/state/etc., but I’m just going on what I’ve dealt with already.
Trust me, I’m no fan of it. While it’s good that the jobs are based on “merit” (I use the term loosely), I don’t think it should be the determinant in landing an interview. They’ve hired plenty of people off of the street because they scored a few points higher on a general examination. Many of those people were laid off for bad performance. The fact that I have worked here for 1 year and I am entirely familiar with the processes involved in the higher position means absolutely zilch.
You made the claim that the jobs are all there due to cronyism; you support it. I’m not doing your work for you, dude.
No, that’s what the news article says, not a Republican.
Again, it would be nice if we all lived in a fairytale world where every job paid a “nice” living wage, only one wage earner had to work to support their 4-family household, and lillies pooped out gold nuggets. We don’t.
But, I’m curious. Why isn’t your heart bleeding for the McDonalds burger flipper or the Kroger checkout clerk?
Are you fine with the $31 an hour and life tenure bits, though? because that’s the important part.
A scant 4 years later and they found union representation and threatened to strike over their low wages:
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=119749
Seems like maybe it wasn’t a huge success?
If only a couple guys ever rise to the $31 level, I’m not going to get too worked up about it. If every single toll collector makes $31/hr, that seems pretty outrageous. The truth is almost certainly somewhere between those, but “a few people make that much, but most make much less” is pretty different from “almost everyone makes that much.” I would be interested to know which is accurate.
depends on what the result of the mediation was…
This is an interesting issue in that the average pay is probably more relevant than the top pay. However, how do you have seniority and justify wage increases with experience in a job like this? There’s no room for growth. You don’t somehow pick up the tricks of the trade after some practice. You don’t redesign your widget-making station to be 10% more efficient. You haven’t learned knowledge on the job that makes you better at it. So how in the world can you even justify an escalating pay scale for a job like this?
The evidence is that there are people willing to work at McDonald’s for $7/hr. Or gas stations. Or cleaning carpets. Or a thousand other crappy jobs for way less than that salary. So if (a) this job is not particularly taxing or difficult compared to other such no-skill crappy jobs and (b) people are willing to work those other crappy jobs for a small fraction of the pay, it’s only logical to conclude they’d work the toll booth job for any amount of money above their other crappy job wages. Set the pay at $10 and watch people flock to the job. Hell, you could set it at $15, pay better than most totally no skill/no danger/no special hardship jobs, and still be coming out way ahead.
Well, are you working at McDoanlds now or a similar job? It’s no counter-point to say “oh, I’ve got a good job that fits my skills and make good money, and I wouldn’t change to a crappy job for that pay, therefore it’s hard to recruit people!”
I’m guessing they’ve never tried to hire people at $10/hr and found themselves short staffed, so I can’t see how it’s capitalism in action. I don’t know how exactly the jobs are handed out - if they’re employees of the state, or simply contracted out by the state - but it seems obvious that there must be some sort of political connection here for a job to be so out of line in regards to the requirements/pay ratio compared to a thousand other crappy jobs.
Is that the best you’ve got? If not everyone in the country fires off an application, it must not be overpaid?
I live way across the country, for one thing. I’m doing alright with my current gig. And more importantly, I know that if a job has that much of a requirements/pay disparity, there are almost certainly about a million other applicants in there, making my effort to apply futile.
I’ve lived in NJ for about eight years.
My impressions about the cost of living?
You can’t touch a one bedroom apartment in a halfway decent neighborhood for under 1k. My house was recently valued at $300k. The house is an older colonial in a good neighborhood with very good schools although a pain in the rear commute to NYC.
Food costs seem comparable with the rest of the country. I moved here from NYC so I don’t pay a city tax anymore. I don’t think clothing is particularly expensive either. I work at home and my husband takes the bus to work so we only basically drive on weekends.
The real issues to me are not that a toll collector gets a halfway decent salary for a mediocre job. The real issues are rising property taxes and the present governor’s idiotic attack on teachers and grandstanding in front of the Republican party. Under his “leadership” the property taxes on my house have risen literally from about 4k to about $5300. That’s a rise of about $100 a month.
Christie is a disgusting asshole who has literally raised taxes on the middle class inhabitants of this state while praising himself. How is that justified? How can that creep stand around getting praised by the fucking Republican party while he lets my taxes rise by so much money?
:rolleyes:
I think if you really want to go after bloated salaries you’d have to take a far closer look at cop salaries:
According to that report cops earn the highest salary in the country with a median rate of over 90k a year. Worse, the cops in the cushiest suburban areas get higher pay than the guy cruising the suburbs every day. To my knowledge Christie has not said a word about this.
Meanwhile he has relentlessly attacked teachers.
According to that report the average teacher salary is about 63k or about 27k less than the average salary for a cop. Teachers do a very good job in this state. We have one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country. My daughter is in second grade. She only has 17 kids in her classroom.
Granted they did ask for a 4.5% raise recently which I thought was over the top. But I am quite satisfied with the education my daughter is getting. That’s part of the reason we moved here rather than Long Island where the property taxes are even worse.
So ultimately perhaps the toll collectors are somewhat overpaid. But at the same time there are other, far greater concerns on my mind. I wish Republicans would pay attention to those concerns instead of attempting to make scapegoats out of people who, after all show for work every day and earn a middle class living.
This relentless demonization of working people simply has to stop. It is vile and repulsive. I understand getting mad that some twit on welfare has children and does not work. But the huge ire that we’re apparently all supposed to feel that a working person can pay their bills is simply baffling to me.
Give me a few minutes, I’ve got something for you…
I know it’s not New Jersey, but Politifact followed up on Gov. Kasich’s claim about Ohio toll workers:
The striking thing is that there are exactly 5 people making that. Doesn’t seem like a huge chunk of the budget when you look at it that way. Most people make much less, and the higher earners all work lots of overtime to get there.
[Quote=Rumor_Watkins]
depends on what the result of the mediation was…
[/quote]
Apparently one of their earlier concessions was to put the (privatized) toll collectors on the State’s health care plan. I agree it depends on what the results of the mediation were, but clearly $10.60/hr isn’t all peaches and cream for the toll company.
In any case, you seem to be short on evidence and high on outrage.
Ok. here it is.
From Asbury Park Press’ listing of state gov’t salaries.
There are 326 people with the job description “Toll Collector - Turnpike” (so I didn’t even include the GSP).
Average earnings pre-overtime? $64,936
Number Making Under 50k? 9
Number Making Under 60k? 28 (incl. the 9)
Number Making Over 60k? 298
Average earnings post-overtime? $71,941
Number Making Under 50k? 11 (seems some people with high base salaries only made like 11k, probably injured?)
Number Making Under 60k? 31
Number Making Over 60k? 295
Yes, there are “part time toll collectors” but there are far fewer than the 300 full-time guys
There are also toll supervisors who make a base of 80k
The parkway numbers aren’t substantially different.
view it for yourself, here