Amid staff shortage, Austin lifeguards push for higher wages, better benefits
By Sarah Asch
Austin American-Statesman, June 14, 2022
Scott Cobb, who has worked as a lifeguard in Austin since 2011, says it is only fair for Austin’s hundreds of lifeguards to be paid enough money to live in the city where they work.
“You are responsible for people's lives and you should be compensated more than the current starting rate but $16 an hour,” he said. “It’s very stressful. There are many saves throughout the year at Barton Springs. ... Sometimes we have to respond to medical emergencies.”
With an ongoing lifeguard shortage shuttering nearly half the city’s pool at the start of this summer, Cobb has been leading a push to ask the city to pay lifeguards $22 an hour and provide better benefits.
As of Tuesday the Austin Parks and Recreation Department said it had 444 lifeguards on staff, a little more than half the 750 lifeguards aquatics supervisor Aaron Levine said it would take to be fully staffed. The department said it also has about 60 lifeguards in training. Swimmers face crowding when closures at one site concentrate people in fewer available pools, and some say they worry about what the summer will look like if the city can't solve the problem.
As the cost of living rises in Austin, Cobb said the city needs to take steps to fill positions and retain staff. Austin City Council member Vanessa Fuentes agrees, and she put a proposal on the table that would raise the minimum pay fo city staff, including lifeguards.
Photo by Yannik Love
Fuentes’ proposal would raise the minimum pay for all city employees to $22 an hour, or if that isn’t feasible to whatever increase the city’s current budget would allow. The resolution cites rising housing costs, widespread vacancies across city departments and a recommendation from the Living Wage Working Group. Lifeguards currently make between $16 and $19 an hour, not including the series of bonuses guards were offered this summer.
It is unclear how much it would cost the city to raise all employees making under $22 to that paygrade, though the working group put out a memo with a preliminary estimate between $18.2 and $22.8 million in the next fiscal year.
Fuentes said more information will be part of the discussion about this budget item at the this week's City Council meeting. However, she said this is a priority for her because the longer the city waits to take action the more workers it will lose and the bigger wage gap it will have to close. Council member Chito Vela is co-sponsoring the wage proposal, though he said $22 an hour is probably unrealistic for this budget cycle.
"What we've seen the last six months or so have been disruptions and services. When we have the beginning of summer knowing that half of our pools are closed right now due to our lifeguard shortage, that is pretty significant,” Fuentes said.
Guards push for benefits
The city's lifeguards are among many groups in Austin that are struggling with the rising cost of living.
In May, rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Austin was up 31%, or by $486 a month, compared with the same month last year, according to a report by rental marketplace platform Zumper. Austin experienced a 24.5% increase in the cost of a two-bedroom apartment compared to last year.
According to statistics compiled by Losey and fellow Texas A&M real estate economists, only about 38% of potential repeat homebuyers in the Austin area earned high enough incomes that they could have qualified for mortgage loans to afford the region's median home price of $525,000 in the first quarter, based on a standard 30-year mortgage and a 3.5% fixed interest rate, which was near the prevailing rate at the time.
Cobb and other lifeguards say an increase in wages is only part of the solution. A group of lifeguards put together a list of goals to improve the program. These include that lifeguards should receive holiday pay for working on federal holidays, that they should accrue paid time off, receive meaningful raises when given managerial responsibility and be paid during mandatory training.
Lifeguards are also asking the city to classify year-round workers as regular full-time or part-time employees. All lifeguards except for managers are considered temporary even though many have been on the payroll for years, which means guards are not offered the same benefits as permanent city staff, Cobb said.
Cobb said he and some of his co-workers have met with City Council members and the Parks and Recreation Department’s finance committee to discuss the situation.
Parks and Recreation Director Kimberly McNeely said in an email that the department has received the lifeguard’s suggestions and is reviewing the ideas, though some suggestions are beyond the scope of the department’s authority.
“The Parks and Recreation Department values its workforce and appreciates opportunities to engage with employees,” she wrote. “Every measure the Parks and Recreation Department has taken to recruit staff has helped. The Department is optimistic that it will fill all open positions.”
In attempting to full its open lifeguard positions, the department has increased its marketing budget by 75% to reach prospective employees and fill ranks that were depleted by the pandemic, a city-wide hiring freeze in 2020 and reduced training classes as Austin emerged from the pandemic. The aquatics operating budget within the department is about $11.5 million, and the lifeguard program costs about $3.9 million a year, McNeely said.
Cobb said he thinks the department didn't do enough to prepare for predictable lifeguard shortages this summer. With heat arriving to Austin unseasonably early, pools have been busy this year and staff is working longer hours to keep up with demand. A spokesperson for the department said shifts are the same length as before but lifeguards 16 and older have been authorized to work up to 8 hours of overtime a week because of the staffing shortages
Cobb said as more lifeguards are trained the situation is improving, but said he is still frustrated with how things have been handled. He said the city should have announced the increased base pay of $16 an hour and the lifeguard bonuses earlier in the year to get an earlier start on summer hiring.
“It’s going to be a hot summer. Barton Springs and the other pools are a vital part of the way people in Austin live. It’s because of this failure on the part of the Parks and Recreation Department that we are in the situation that we are in today,” he said. “If we go back to our regular pay rate, the one with the $1 increase and do not raise the wages to $22 in the next budget, the pools will again be closed in part next spring. So they need to deal with the situation now.”
The pay scale and other lingering issues related to the coronavirus pandemic are also leading some lifeguards to leave the city’s employment. Patrick Labay, who worked as a guard since 2015 and served as a facility manager at Deep Eddy, left his role in late May. Labay said he has always worked multiple jobs and said he got tired of the work conditions at the pools.
“The scheduling became completely unable to accommodate the flexibility that I needed, so I couldn't get shifts dropped. When I was sick, I felt that I had to come in because there was no one else to cover,” Labay said. “We're all starting to figure out what we're willing to pay for, for what we're willing to get. That's something that the city has to figure out.”
'This is a priority'
City Council members Fuentes and Vela both said the vacancies in aquatics and other city departments are more complicated than simply low wages, but said they think raising pay will help. Vela also said he supports many of the lifeguards’ requests, including providing full-time benefits to those who work year-round.
“This is a priority because by addressing our lifeguard shortage, we're also addressing the other growing pains that our city is facing,” Fuentes said.
Vela said it’s important to get this right, both for city staff and for the residents who expect to be able to use city-owned aquatic facilities, especially as temperatures continue to rise.
“Austin has this beautiful collection of swimming pools, beautiful parks, and what's the point of having these amazing facilities, if we can’t open them?” he said. “When people want to go swimming on a hot summer day and their pool is closed because of a lifeguard shortage, that negatively impacts the city. That hurts our relationship with our city or our citizens. We've got to provide the services that people have come to expect.”