City approves pay increases for non-union employees

ISHPEMING — Some employees of the city of Ishpeming will be seeing a pay increase in the new year.

The Ishpeming City Council approved a sixty cent per hour pay raise for most non-union employees at a special meeting Tuesday morning. The Council approved even larger increases for the City Treasurer and the City Zoning Administrator to bring their salaries in line with those in other cities.

“Both of those individuals are receiving a substantial increase – a five dollar an hour increase – which is quite a large increase, but it’s very well justified,” said City Manager Mark Slown. “Other people doing that same work are paid much more than they are, and if we want to keep qualified people, we have to compensate them appropriately.”

These increases were accounted for by the 2016 budget that was approved late last month. The Council also moved to address the city’s unique situation in which its non-union employees each possess individual employment agreements.

“It’s making extra work for certain staff members, because they have to go check out the fine print in each one of these separate employment contracts for all of the different employees that have separate agreements that are all a little bit different,” Slown added. “The Council has directed that we establish a little working group committee to move forward with creating a non-union employee policy document that would take the place of all these separate agreements.”

Another committee was also established to work on changes to the City Attorney’s contract. Both committees plan to have their work completed by the end of the year.