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Youngstown mayor enacted a policy regarding compensation for nonunion employees working extra hours
Legislation addresses compensation for extra hours of work
YOUNGSTOWN
Unable to get city council to approve legislation to change how about 100 nonunion employees get compensated for extra hours of work, Mayor John A. McNally took matters into his own hands.
McNally’s administration asked council about six months ago to consider a policy that details which nonunion workers are eligible for accumulated time and compensatory time when exceeding 40 hours of work in a week.
The proposal never made it out of council’s finance committee despite attempts by the administration to engage in further discussions.
McNally decided to implement the policy, beginning July 25, without council’s permission.
“The law department says the mayor has power under the city charter and the [federal] Fair Labor Standards Act to enact this policy,” McNally said Friday.
The mayor acknowledged he “bypassed” council – saying he did so because “we want to get these changes in place.”
He described his decision this way: “The best analogy is it’s an executive order, but it’s administrative in nature. Executive order seems too formal to me. We need to get this done, and that’s what we’re doing.”
This is the first time McNally has made such an “order” as mayor, a job he’s had since January 2014.
McNally said he didn’t let any of the seven members of council know about his decision.
When told by The Vindicator on Friday, Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st, said she doubted that McNally has the authority to implement this on his own.
Gillam said she’d likely contact a lawyer to see if this is permissible. She said she wouldn’t go through the city’s law department, which wrote the policy on behalf of McNally.
Councilman T.J. Rodgers, D-2nd, said he wants to look into this further before making a comment.
But when asked if he was disappointed by McNally’s decision, Rodgers said: “Yeah. I would hope we’d be able to work together to get a solution.”
Mark D’Apolito, an assistant law director and the city’s contract monitor who spearheaded this effort, said the plan for using accumulated time and compensatory time provides flexibility to nonunion workers.
Rather than being paid overtime, certain workers can receive accumulated time for working more than 40 hours in a workweek. Accumulated time allows workers to keep up to 80 hours at any given time that can be cashed out at a pay rate of time and a half, D’Apolito said.
Department supervisors also have the option to grant compensatory time, which are days off with pay at time and a half, to certain employees for working more than 40 hours a week, he said.