DMN reports on comments that Mayor Mike Rawlings made at a city budget briefing on Tuesday about his desire to move sanitation workers from being contract workers to become city employees.
“It worries me when times get good that we use outsourcing just to pay people less money,” Rawlings said. “There’s a policy issue there.”
Rawlings noted that most of those contract workers are minorities and he invoked Wednesday’s 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
“People are very confused about what this economic justice is all about and it’s looking, it’s staring us right in the face,” Rawlings said. “We’ve got to figure out how to get these folks a living wage and a career that they can grow in this city.”
There’d be a $3.2 million cost involved in making a change like this. That’d likely be passed on to Dallas residents via sanitation fee hikes or, in future years, even a property tax increase. Are you willing to pay?