My Employer's Potential Financial Scandal

I have been a certified lifeguard working at a New York State Park for the last four summers now and have continuously been drawn back to this workplace thanks to the higher rate of pay they offer. Being a college student, money is a constant need for me to pay off all my expenses and have something left over for myself. But regardless of what they offer for pay, their actions and treatment of employees has to be told. I know a lot of people would be skeptical about one person's take on the events, but ask anyone who's worked as a lifeguard at any state park in New York, and they'll complain about the same thing: It's been four years since we were promised a raise, and they took illegal maneuvers to make sure we never got it.

Since these parks are operated by the state, the lifeguards had for a long time been placed in a union known as NYSCOPBA, which stands for New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association. For whatever reason that still eludes me, someone in the State decided to make the State Park lifeguards part of this union so they could receive some of the same treatment of the police officers throughout New York State. Four years ago, a motion was passed through the union that all the employees under it receive a raise in their salary due to the climbing rate of minimum wage and the growing prices of many products due to this. However, the proposition of the raise sat untouched for a long time, and it took some time for the police officers to ever see a cent of it. They have, however, since then gotten their raise from the union after a long delay, but the lifeguards never saw even the slightest bit of it. Whenever someone attempted to contest the fact that the lifeguards had not gotten what they were promised, the supervisors and head lifeguards kept saying the same thing: there was no representation. The union hadn't given us representation within their organization in years, and there was no way thus for us to argue against the fact that we hadn't gotten what we had been promised.

I was angry about it being on hold, but at least it seemed sometime they would pass the motion to give us our raise and we would receive payments retroactively for the time that had passed with no activity in the union. I was given a harsh and very rude awakening this summer, however, when we were informed that NYSCOPBA was removing us from their union and instead placing us in the even less stable CSEA union in order to duck out on ever having to give us a raise. Since we hadn't had representation in the union for so long, there wasn't any way to change the fact that we were being shifted from one to the other in order for the State to avoid having to pay us more. I don't know about all of you reading this, but is an agreement between NYSCOPBA and the department of the State Parks too strange to consider? Many people who this effected and their families all agree that it seems incredibly shady, that more than likely New York State thought it could save a little extra money by making sure its State Lifeguards didn't get the raise they were promised. And with our tuition ever growing, it seems direly unfair that we were promised something that we never received.

Personally, I am very happy with my hourly wage. I have never complained that the State doesn't pay its employees well, because they do, and as a college student it's a good job to have. But the principle of the manner is that they promised us something they more than likely had no intention of ever giving us, and for four years they hid themselves from us to make sure we didn't start sensing their true intentions. Four years of summer work and never once did I see a representative of the union come anywhere near the park; it seems as though they were taking every measure they could to avoid us completely. No one ever seemed to have any answers about the matter either, no matter what supervisor we asked who had daily contact with the State. If they had never intended to give us the raise we were promised, they shouldn't have taken us into their union or said they were going to in the first place. It made me frustrated to think that I waited four years in anticipation of what they had promised and nothing came of it. I'm not even sure of how accurate some of my information on the length of time it took to even pay the police officers their fair share because no one from the organization ever informed us of anything that was occurring within the union. In fact, when we were informed that we were being moved into CSEA, it was because we were already in the process of shifting into the union. There was no warning about it at all, so we didn't have any option to contest what they were doing.

I know some people think I should probably just be thankful for what I do get from the state, and I am, but it's more the principle of the matter that they appear to have used some under-handed techniques in order to make sure we kept our same old pay when we were promised a higher one. I would have honestly liked it better if they had just said to our faces that they felt we weren't worth the extra money and just kept paying the same salary instead of leading us on for years. I know my small article on the matter isn't going to change anything, and sure enough I'll be back working in the same State Park yet again this summer, but I feel that people should know what happened in case they ever experience it for themselves. I know that a lot of it has to do with politics, favoritism and worth in the eyes of superiors, but I still believe deep down that we were cheated out of something that we were promised.