With budgets tighter than ever, cities
across America are increasingly looking for more free labor. Nowhere is
that trend more evident than Yakima, Wash.
“More and more every year, a large part of
what we do is volunteers,” says Archie Matthews, Yakima’s director of
neighborhood development services, “It saves us a ton of money.”
Matthews says begging for volunteers is not
beneath him. And to his surprise, he usually gets them. Once signed up,
they do a variety of tasks, including construction work for low-income
housing, painting over gang graffiti and keeping senior centers from
having to close their doors.
Mary Lizotte, 74, volunteers eight hours a
week at a senior center, where the paid staff has been trimmed to just
three employees.
“We’ve been faced with cuts in the budget
and threatened to be closed down a couple of days a week,” Lizotte said.
“It’s not only good for them, it’s good for us volunteers.” The center
is able to stay open seven days a week with volunteers doing everything
from clerical work to preparing and serving the food.
According to a Volunteering in America
study, last year 63 million Americans volunteered more than eight
billion hours. When you calculate average wages and benefits for city
employees, local governments saved $173 billion.
In many places churches are leading the way.
“We’re at a time when, as citizens we need to be giving ourselves away
freely to serve our communities,” says Dave Edler, pastor at Yakima’s
Foursquare Church which held a park cleanup with several hundred
volunteers recently.
But not everyone is thrilled about the civic
spirit. Some unions are pushing back, fearing volunteers are cutting
into their territory. “They’re eroding the number of hours for our
people,” says Ian Gordon of Laborer’s Union 1239 in Seattle. “It’s of
great concern that they might be doing further work that we would
normally do.”
Gordon’s union represent 900 city employees,
nearly half of them maintenance workers in the Parks Department, which
cut staff by 14 percent. He’s met with city officials over the volunteer
issue and insisted on a significant roadblock. Volunteers are not
allowed to drive work trucks or use power equipment of any kind. No
lawnmowers, no weed whackers, no leaf blowers.
Len Gilroy of the Reason Institute says it’s
about protecting their turf. “Unions see a threat to jobs and lavish
benefits that they’ve secured for their employees,” says Gilroy.
Ian Gordon won’t dispute that. “I need to be concerned about our people, who have lives, families and who need to make a living wage,” says Gordon.
Some unions don’t have a problem. The Police
Guild in Redlands, Calif., has welcomed a big spike in volunteer cops
even after 21 paid officers were laid off. The city now has nearly four
times as many volunteer officers as full-time, paid cops. Many of the
volunteers do everything their paid counterparts do, from chasing down
suspects to making arrests. “It’s essential for us,” says Redlands
Police Chief Mark Garcia, “especially in tough financial times.”
City officials admit there is a balancing
act. They want to keep city services going in the wake of cutbacks. The
only way to do that is with volunteers. The trick, they say, is to tap
into a growing pool of free labor without angering their organized
labor.
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