Letter to the Editor: The Real State of Hayward

This week, the Mayor of Hayward delivered his state of the city address.

If the Mayor wants to find out the real state of Hayward, he can spend some time with the families of city employees. My coworker, a single mom with three children, is afraid of retaliation or of losing her job, so I will keep her name out of print, but her story needs to be told.

She pulls her car out of the Hayward Police Department parking lot many days for the long commute home to find she only has mac and cheese, top ramen, or some soup her daughter has picked up from a local food bank to prepare for dinner.

Social services says she makes too much for food stamps. On paper it’s $29 an hour, but after all the recent cuts and concessions, her net hourly pay is about $15.

We have both tightened our budgets since the Hayward City Council cut more than 25% of our incomes since 2010.

Like so many others who come to work feeling like they don’t matter, the city’s recent actions — another 5-10% cut — have broken our will. We worry about how we will juggle bills, food, a mortgage, transportation and much-needed healthcare for our children.

Her son’s soccer is a luxury he will now have to give up. After last year’s pay cuts, her son paid for his own registration and training fees, exhausting his savings account. This year he has nothing left to draw from so he simply can’t play soccer after state cup ends and the new season begins. On top of that he is a straight-A student.

Her oldest daughter just lost her job, so the family has $60 — her unemployment check — to last two weeks.

It wasn’t always like this.

When she started working for the city, she was paid about $1800 every two weeks. Then due to lay-offs, she was reassigned to another position.

Then they cut 12% and she made a little over $1500. She was still able to pay her mortgage but had to take out a personal loan, which she is still paying back. Now she makes just over $1,300 every two weeks.

An entire paycheck goes to her mortgage, which won’t even be paid in full, and then her family of four has next to nothing to live on for two weeks.

It is easy to get bogged down with realities of our day-to-day life not to see the bigger picture of what’s really going on here.

The situation of city workers is not unique, like so many other working families that face tremendous economic hardships in California, where inequality is widening and our state is getting poorer.

So, who’s to blame?  To hear the politicians tell it, it is the cost of employees — people like me and every other clerk, librarian, or maintenance worker.

From Gov. Jerry Brown’s office in Sacramento to the Hayward City Council and Hayward Mayor’s Office, the poorest-paid workers are targeted for blame and cutbacks. So they double down on austerity measures like the ones that have pushed my family to the brink of poverty.

Since cuts to Hayward workers began in 2010, an estimated $13.9 million in revenue has been lost to local businesses, as more than 350 workers like me just struggle to survive.  That number will continue to rise, as the latest cutbacks take even more money out of the local economy.

Public service workers deserve better than food banks, foreclosure, and bankruptcy. Public services are an investment, not a liability, and politicians need to treat workers who provide them with fairness.

My coworkers’ job is to help make the streets safer so our community can operate.  Librarians help the public learn, so we can build brighter futures.  Maintenance workers care for the infrastructure that allows all this to happen.

Hayward politicians are wrong.

We are not the problem. We are the solution. We are willing and capable to create a better future for our children and the next generation.  We can’t do that while we worry about choosing between gas in the car or food on the table.

And the Mayor of Hayward is wrong.

The real state of the city is that we are facing growing inequality.  It is his job, and the job of each of us, to do everything we can to work against this kind of inequality and support our communities and our working families.

We ask the City Council reverse these debilitating cuts and help Hayward families get back on their feet.

Suzanne Philis
Hayward City Worker
Local SEIU 1021