The Alamo Colleges board of trustees approved a “living wage” Tuesday night for its nonfaculty employes, including a minimum $11.50 per hour for full-time employees, a raise of $1.38 per hour for those now making the lowest pay.

The community college district employs nearly 1,500 full-time workers, but the raise would apply to only 49 of them, mostly housekeeping staff, Linda Boyer-Owens, associate vice chancellor of human resources, told the board’s finance committee last week.

The average length of service among that group is 10 years, so “they are keepers in our workplace,” Boyer-Owens said. “It would be very good for them.”

In raises that will take effect Jan. 1, the district also increased pay, to $10 an hour, for 166 of its more more than 700 part-time and temporary employees.

Almost all are students in a group that includes computer lab assistants, disability services assistants and peer adviser ambassadors, and some of them have been earning as little as $8.87 per hour, Boyer-Owens said.

Work-study positions will be paid an hourly wage of $9, a $1.75 increase. The district has more than 500 such jobs.

The full-time and part-time staff raises will be paid through a transfer of almost $154,000 from the reserve fund balance, Diane Snyder, vice chancellor of finance, said last week.

The work-study program is affected by federal and state funding. The raises will come from a district fund recently set up to ensure a consistent level of such employees, district spokesman Mario Muñiz said.

“This is unquestionably the right thing to do for our employees and work-study students, and is in keeping with our mission of 'empowering our diverse communities for success,’” Chancellor Bruce Leslie said in a written statement.

The decision came amid a campaign by the community organization coalition COPS/Metro Alliance to press for a living wage for public employees countywide, with a three-year goal of $14.91 per hour.

“We find it definitely unacceptable that our public sector workers are paid so little that they qualify for food stamps,” Guillermo Vazquez, director of the Texas Workers Alliance, said at Tuesday’s meeting.

The board will continue to assess its pay scales over the next few years, said Muñiz, who pointed out that Alamo Colleges pays all health insurance costs for full-time staffers, unlike other public employers in Bexar County.

“It’s not like comparing apples to apples,” Muñiz said.

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