I work as a city clerk in a rural Alaska village. There isn't much economy, but there's enough. I moved here because my wife is Alaska Native. In my job I wear several hats. I'm a financial manager, landfill administrator, and grant writer, as well as other things. It's just me. My boss is seven different people that make up the city council. Oh, and every month, I have to provide a report showing the financials and what I did since the month prior while getting critiqued about why I did or didn't do something. It feels like I'm having an evaluation once a month, where I have to explain myself and justify my actions. Aside from that, I never thought I'd have a job like this, the job is fucking perfect for me. It's perfect because I'm very politically engaged and ideologically fit for work in local government.
When I started the job, I had no training or support. There was another guy there longer than I who worked as a utility clerk. He didn't know shit. After I learned the ins and outs of the city, and was able to put together a budget for the financial year, I had to then teach this guy who had been at the position longer than me. I asked for a minimum of a 5$ raise, which at the time I was getting paid $18 an hour. They gave me instead a $2 raise to make sure my pay was equal to the other guy because they wanted to keep it “fair.” I was upset, but I pressed on, I was getting paid $20 an hour now. I was able to convince them them to update their policy to start paying people more for being educated and/or certified. I am nearly finished with my masters degree. I'm cultural anthropology, and I have a BA in Fisheries (3/4 my classes were on accounting and business management). They then gave me a $3 raise, which I was actually happy about. Then come my coworkers' evaluation, and out of the blue, they give him a $5 raise. I was happy for him. I'm glad the council was finally going to start paying their employees better. I was expecting the same treatment when I got my evaluation. I successfully wrote my first grant for a project that was awarded over $100,000. Things were going well for me. I was doing good, and I believe in the work that I do.
They gave me fucking a 3% ($.71) raise. I couldn't believe it. They made the same bullshit arguments about how there isn't money in the budget and how the policy stated only a 3% merit increase following a positive annual evaluation. There was money in the budget, we were bringing in more money now than we were ever before. When they gave the utility clerk a $5 raise, they didn't consider any of that, and he didn't do anything that would merit him that high of an increase. After 2 months of back and forth, I finally convinced them that they were treating me unfairly. They compromised to give me a 12% ($2.81) raise but no back pay to my original evaluation date.
It was such a fight just to get that small of a raise, and with how it all went down, even though I won, I still feel upset. Has anyone else experienced this?
I think I feel upset mostly because I had to advocate for myself. Some of the council members would say they support me, but when it came down to advocating for me, they're silent and let one tyrant have the final say. And that person wasn't even the mayor.