City workers speak in favor of proposed Charlotte budget with pay raises, bonuses

Charlotte city workers and union members said they approved of the city’s proposed $3.2 billion budget, citing pay raises and bonuses for workers employed across the city.

The proposed budget includes various salary hikes, including raising the city workers’ minimum wage to $20 an hour.

Charlotte Water crew chief and union president Dominic Harris said the raises are a “step in the right direction,” but added there is more work to do in future budgets.

Harris spoke Monday night at the Charlotte City Council meeting during a public hearing on the budget.

Workers protested in March by marching to the government center and asking for higher wages. At the time, they said some workers couldn’t afford to live in the city because of low pay.

The employees thank “everybody that knows that city workers deserve to be able to live in the city we work in,” Harris said. “Hourly wage workers (have) deserved it for a long time.”

Kass Ottley, a project staff organizer at the workers’ union, thanked several City Council members for meeting with them to work through the budget. She also thanked City Manager Marcus Jones and his staff.

Mike Ross, a Charlotte Water employee, said the union would return the favor at the voting booth. The primary election is May 17.

Breakdown of raises, bonuses for Charlotte city workers

The Charlotte Observer previously reported that the bonuses and pay raises for employees across the city include:

▪ 8% raise for all hourly employees. This would go into effect in two stages, with a 4% increase in July and a 4% increase in January.

▪ 2% of salary bonus for all hourly, salaried and public safety workers. There’s a $1,000 bonus minimum for those groups.

▪ An additional 2.5% salary increase for any worker whose labor requires a commercial’s driver’s license, and a 2.5% increase for people working second and third shifts.

▪ 4% merit pool raise for all salaried employees who don’t work in public safety.

▪ 3% increase for all public safety employees.

▪ 10.5% increase to the starting pay for all police and fire department employees — 9% by July and 10.5% by January.

The Council will hold a straw vote on the budget on May 25 and vote on whether to approve it May 31.

This story was originally published May 9, 2022 at 9:17 PM.

Will Wright

The Charlotte Observer

Will Wright covers politics in Charlotte and North Carolina. He previously covered eastern Kentucky for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and worked as a reporting fellow at The New York Times.