What will you do with your pay raise?

[Guest guest]

With the minimum wage bill set to be passed soon in the Senate, I

thought I'd ask many our our rural EMT's and medics, and those

working for transfer services not facing a lack of staff (Houston,

anyone?) - What will you do with your pay raise?

What pay raise, you ask? You already make more than minimum wage?

At $5.15, you probably do. But when it phases in over two years to

$7.25, for how many folks will your pay inevitably go up? If you're

getting $6, $6.50 or even $7.00/hr now, congratulations, you're

guaranteed a raise in two years!

Employers - what will you do? Cut hours? Cut positions? Encourage

more aggressive documentation? Find better billing companies?

Resort to telemarketing where you get 6% of the proceeds? Or will

you drop what few benefits you can afford, essentially nullifying the

raise your employees just got - but not at your cost - at theirs?

Other employers - will you raise your wages in an indexed fashion?

Will you keep the " wage gap " in place and support the inevitable cost

of living increase that will follow a minimum wage increase? If

Chick-Fil-A is offering $9/hr *now*, before the minimum wage

increase, what will you do when the person serving your medics meals

they can carry to post assignments makes more than your medics do,

and when your medics realize it?

I'm only curious...

Mike :/

[Guest guest]

It seems everyone gripes about the low pay for EMS (guilty here). I

work for a hospital-based system with dual-medic trucks. We bitch and

moan about how much more the nurses earn as well as the across-the-

board raises and sign-on bonuses they sometimes receive, while we stand

around and wait for our whole 3% yearly raise. Granted, we have more

down-time than they do. But that is changing as we are getting more

involved with patient education, injury prevention, and research.

Are we afraid to bite the hands that feed us? Or is it that it's

just become commonplace to sit by and wait for something to happen?

" Do you want fries with that? " is beginning to sound pretty good.

[Guest guest]

What am I doing with my pay raise? 2 for 99 cent Jack in the Box tacos,

baby!!!! Yeah!!! LOL

-Wes

Re: What will you do with your pay raise?

It seems everyone gripes about the low pay for EMS (guilty here). I

work for a hospital-based system with dual-medic trucks. We bitch and

moan about how much more the nurses earn as well as the across-the-

board raises and sign-on bonuses they sometimes receive, while we stand

around and wait for our whole 3% yearly raise. Granted, we have more

down-time than they do. But that is changing as we are getting more

involved with patient education, injury prevention, and research.

Are we afraid to bite the hands that feed us? Or is it that it's

just become commonplace to sit by and wait for something to happen?

" Do you want fries with that? " is beginning to sound pretty good.

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[Guest guest]

How VERY short sighted Wes....

I personally am finally going to put a down payment on that mansion I

was looking at in Dallas when I was there....cuz Iowa Winters are

getting OLD..

Y'all stop having that Ice before I move there, Okay? <G>

Jules

Re: What will you do with your pay raise?

It seems everyone gripes about the low pay for EMS (guilty here). I

work for a hospital-based system with dual-medic trucks. We bitch and

moan about how much more the nurses earn as well as the across-the-

board raises and sign-on bonuses they sometimes receive, while we

stand

around and wait for our whole 3% yearly raise. Granted, we have more

down-time than they do. But that is changing as we are getting more

involved with patient education, injury prevention, and research.

Are we afraid to bite the hands that feed us? Or is it that it's

just become commonplace to sit by and wait for something to happen?

" Do you want fries with that? " is beginning to sound pretty good.

__________________________________________________________

Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and

security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from

across the web, free AOL Mail and more.

[Guest guest]

The nurses banded together on a national basis and lobbied for their

salaries and status about 20 years ago. If anything is going to happen,

we need to do the same. The difficulty arises when you go to a large

city FD/EMS and try to get someone making $60K, working once every 3

days, very good benefits, and probably less call volume than you to

unite with you. Most of the time, they'll just say, " take our test and

get on with us. "

-MH

>>> " gla6999 " 1/24/2007 11:53 am >>>

It seems everyone gripes about the low pay for EMS (guilty here). I

work for a hospital-based system with dual-medic trucks. We bitch and

moan about how much more the nurses earn as well as the across-the-

board raises and sign-on bonuses they sometimes receive, while we stand

around and wait for our whole 3% yearly raise. Granted, we have more

down-time than they do. But that is changing as we are getting more

involved with patient education, injury prevention, and research.

Are we afraid to bite the hands that feed us? Or is it that it's

just become commonplace to sit by and wait for something to happen?

" Do you want fries with that? " is beginning to sound pretty good.