It happened earlier this week during a City Council meeting.
Hagerstown, MD (KB) Last week, the City of Hagerstown decided to provide full-time employees who worked through the COVID-19 pandemic with $5,000 dollar stipends.
One part-time worker, a 68-year-old Parks & Rec employee, spoke up during a Council meeting earlier this week.
“Basically it came down to two questions — why are the full-time people getting the money, and why aren’t the part time and the other ones?” he asked. “It’s not the thing about the Federal Government, we understand that, we read that in the Herald Mail. But are they being compensated for lost wages, or are they compensated for being potentially exposed to COVID-19?”
He said many part-time and seasonal employees are stepping up to fill in positions throughout the city.
“We have people here that they’re disenfranchised, they’re people that do not have the education, some are illiterate, they’re working for minimum wage, and they’re working ungodly hours,” he explained.
The part-timer said this stipend is driving a wedge between full-time and part-time employees.
“The greeting that we have in the morning for the full-time people is ‘what are you doing with your $5,000 dollars?” he said. “It’s not ‘hi, how are you doing.’ And then we go to work.”
The resident said he works close to 36-hours a week and remembers a time he worked overtime to make sure another employee made it home safely.
He said he was able to talk to 16 other part-time employees before speaking at the City Council meeting.
“What’s happening is really wrong,” he said. “The issue is they don’t know why they were picked out not to get something.”