Why Santa Clara County workers deserve hero pay
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is using one-time federal revenue to recognize their hero employees with $2,500 per full time county employee, $500 per inhome care worker and a comparable amount for part-time employees. We will also be proposing augmentation of funding for partner community-based organizations to support their needs. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 envisioned that most local governments would do the same to recognize their employees as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the Trump antigovernment playbook, a junior San Jose City Councilman, Matt Mahan, has been disparaging county employees about “hero pay” rather than advocating for his city employees to get the same recognition. Here is why he is wrong.
County employees, in-home care providers and community partners under contract with the county all provide the basic human services within Santa Clara County that hold together the fabric of society. They do this every day, and during the COVID-19 pandemic they have continued to provide those services and developed the most successful pandemic response of any large county in the nation. These public servants provide fabulous health care to thousands of residents through the largest public health delivery system in Northern California — including three hospitals, 12 county-owned clinics, many community clinics and many clinical providers.
They provide libraries, roads, permanent affordable housing, transitional homeless services, behavioral health services, sheriff’s patrol, criminal justice services, parks, disaster response, emergency services such as 911 dispatch and the ambulance system, and coordination of millions of dollars of contracts with community-based service providers. County workers and their community partners provide social services for children and families — including child protective services, adult protective services and support for residents in need of food and economic stability. They help to protect your health from environmental threats, public health threats, hazardous materials and infections from pests.
More than 22,000 county employees, 27,000 in-home service workers and scores of nonprofit workers provide these services and more, including all the support systems needed to sustain the work. To me, their everyday work is heroic. But their work during the pandemic was superhuman. Without their dedicated efforts, there would have been thousands of more COVID-19 deaths in our community.
Sadly, some people such as the junior member of the San Jose City Council appear to take these workers for granted. They are critical of the county’s decision.
Maybe the critics don’t realize what county employees do daily. Maybe they don’t realize that the typical county employee is a professional woman of color who makes about $100,000 per year and is dedicated to both her clients and her family. Maybe the critics don’t realize that a $2,500 one-time payment for a two-year hero response is about equal to the cost of a cup of coffee for every workday. Maybe they don’t realize that over two-thirds of county employees worked on-site every day during the peak of shelter-in-place and that thousands more served as disaster service workers — picking up homeless individuals from the streets and driving them to motels, providing support to the ill and taking many other necessary risks.
Our county employees don’t get stock options or year-end bonuses. Rather, they provide critical safety-net and essential services that are at the core of our society. They keep our communities safe and prosperous. During the pandemic, countyoperated sites provided most of the testing and vaccination to our residents. Our county employees rose to the challenge of a century and made an enormous difference to the community.
I think they deserve recognition for their sacrifices. A cup of coffee a day is the least we can do.