Barton Springs lifeguards fight for $22 wage amid a citywide shortage and pool closures
Barton Springs lifeguards fight for $22 wage amid a citywide shortage and pool closures
The city looks to hire more than 500 lifeguards.
May 2, 2022 Updated: May 4, 2022 5:11 p.m.
On a warm, overcast Wednesday afternoon in late April, Barton Springs is expected to be bustling. Even though University of Texas and Austin ISD are in session, the spring-fed pool is immensely popular year-round for daily swimmers, polar bear plungers, and lazy waders alike.
But today, when a dip into the 68-degree water might be a cure-all for the pre-summertime blues, groups of swimmers are down in the dumps. One after another, they walk up to the main entrance and look dejected at the locked gate and the lack of splashing in the deep waters below.
"I saw someone swimmin' ... I think," one woman says to another in a different party of bummed-out people. It might be some geese. Could be some fence-jumpers.
Barton Springs is closed on Wednesdays — and Mondays too — because it doesn't have enough lifeguards to regularly fill the nine chairs that line the pool. The city is facing a lifeguard shortage overall, too. As of Wednesday, April 27, the entire city has 165 lifeguards on staff. With 33 pools, plus Barton Springs, the Austin Parks and Recreation Department anticipates that it needs to hire 585 lifeguards as soon as possible.
They don't have enough lifeguards because, in a rapidly growing city where rents have increased 35% year-over-year and many people have ruled out buying a home, potential hires and former Barton Springs guards have found higher paying gigs. On April 27, when I check out an empty Barton Springs, city lifeguards are making $15 per hour to start.
The only lifeguard outside the facility that day, Scott Cobb, is off duty, and he's in street clothes. Since November, he has led a team of lifeguards in a fight for an increase in pay at the city's most popular pool. When I meet him, he is holding homemade posters and asking folks to sign his petition for a $22 hourly wage and better benefits.
"I know a lot of guards who would come back to Barton Springs right away. And probably, if they started advertising today, within a couple of weeks, this place could be reopened on Mondays and Wednesdays," Cobb says.
The Parks Department has offered a signing bonus of up to $1,250 for prospective hires, but have not yet increased the hourly wage. That's because the wage increase to $22 requires action by Austin City Council, whereas the signing bonuses do not. Cobb and his fellow lifeguards hope the item makes it onto one of the next two meetings of City Council, before the summer begins.
"I think the city has gotten used to saving money off of the labor of their least powerful employees," Cobb says, of the hesitancy so far to raise wages despite city closures. "Basically, we're subsidizing the budget by being undervalued by our labor, because they're used to that. And they say, well, we can't give you a raise right now."
A couple days after we speak, Cobb is instructed to tell me that he doesn't represent the City of Austin, and that everything he says comes from his personal viewpoint, which he believes is an attempt to deter him and other lifeguards from talking to the media.
To address the hiring shortage, City Council Member Paige Ellis of District 8 is sponsoring a resolution, which includes an increase in hourly pay. However, prior to the May 5 City Council meeting, the Parks and Recreation Department announced that lifeguards would get a $1 increase in hourly pay, meaning they now start at $16 per hour.
“Because of our work to pass the resolution addressing the lifeguard shortage back in March, I'm happy that our Parks Department is able to increase their hourly pay rate, offer significant bonuses, waive startup fees, and provide free bus passes," Ellis says, in a statement provided to MySA. "These changes will result in an effective $4-6 per hour increase per hour per employee. Further hourly increases will need to be considered as part of the budget process going forward.”
The item to increase pay to $22 is not on the Thursday, May 5 agenda.
However, it does have other supporters among City Council, however. District 2's Vanessa Fuentes recently met with a few of the lifeguards to discuss the shortage and how City Council can address it. She supports a $22 per hour wage for all city employees.
"I believe that Austin City Council has the opportunity that we should be acting immediately, really, because we have to recruit lifeguards at a livable wage," she says, "and quite frankly, in Austin, it's not $15 per hour anymore."
The lifeguard shortage is not limited to Austin. Public pools and lakes in Chicago, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities are facing closures this summer. Newsweek reported that a third of public pools across the country could close this summer because of a dearth of lifeguards. The Massachusetts Department of Conservation has addressed hiring issues by raising its hourly wages to $21 per hour, and up to $26 per hour.
"If you to want to go swimming in Massachusetts, you're going to be able to do that whenever you want this summer," Cobb says. "That still is very much in doubt here in Austin, because of a lack of planning by the Parks and Recreation Department. They can still save the summer if they immediately raise it to a $22 wage through additional bonuses or a combination of bonuses and pay raises."
Fuentes knows that other cities have growing pains like Austin does, "but what is different," she says, "is that we are a prosperous city, a growing city, that has some really big challenges. And so it's incumbent on policymakers to take action."
She represents southeast Austin, which includes Del Valle and encompasses Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where she recently proposed — to no avail — a relocation of proposed the Jet-A fuel storage facility.
"It is important for me, especially as someone who represents, predominantly a community of color, a working class community, and someone who knows that our swimming pools are such vital pieces of our neighborhoods," Fuentes says. "Which is why I hope City Council will take action."
Barton Springs will remain closed on Mondays and Wednesdays until they can address the citywide lifeguard shortage.
Barton Springs being closed is one thing. It's a paid-entry facility that is just one understaffed location in the city, with a higher certification bar for lifeguards, and more prestige for hirees. The council member hopes that facilities in her district, like her neighborhood's Dove Springs pool, aren't forgotten.
"When we do get them on board, I hope that they are equitably distributed across our 33 pools so that we can maintain services in an equitable manner," Fuentes says.
For now, lifeguards wait for pay increases and city dwellers staring down imminent 100-degree temperatures pray their pools will open — and open safely.
Cobb and his co-workers love working at Barton Springs, and long for the days where it can remain open and fully staffed.
Cobb is ready for life at his pool to get back to normal, with full guard-stands and regular operating hours. He also sees this demand as more than a short-term goal. He loves working as a Barton Springs lifeguard, and wants to protect a once-coveted position at the pool.
"We're advocating for us, we're advocating for the lifeguards five years from now," he says. "We want the people of Austin five years from now to be watched over by qualified, professional lifeguards who are not struggling paycheck to paycheck."
