The Khazei campaign has made “15,000 jobs” created by City Year a centerpiece of its first campaign commercial. I thought I’d take a look at what those jobs paid. City Year says “Your day at City Year will start early and end late” and describes a “sample Monday” with work from 8.00 am to 6.00 pm: 10 hours per day, 50 hours per week. Elsewhere, however, the organization writes: “As a corps member, you will commit to a minimum of 1,700 hours of service over a 10-month period starting in August.” Call that 42 weeks: 40 hours per week. A standard City Year stipend, according to the organization, is $200 per week: $4-5 per hour, based on the work weeks above, before benefits. (Current federal minimum wage is $7 per hour, and the minimum wage in Massachusetts is $8 per hour, for reference.)
Now, of course, Khazei himself made $315,000 per year as CEO of City Year, but, sadly, I don’t think 15,000 jobs like that are the ones he is talking about.
Erin explains exactly how City Year corps members (employees?) are compensated, food stamps and all, in this video produced by City Year. The $6,425 in benefits she describes (valuing 10 months of T-Mobile with unlimited texting at $500) pushes the total package to about $14,825 for 10 months, and the hourly totals to between $7 and $8.82, plus “limited” health care. If I have missed anything, or if the “15,000 jobs” the candidate referred to in his commercial were different that the ones Erin describes, perhaps the campaign or someone else who knows could set me straight in the comments.
but they’re also not jobs that people who need good paying jobs typically even qualify for. These jobs go to kids with relatively small skill sets, and (nearly always?!) without dependents.
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p>The gov’t kicks in about $20M. The important question in my opinion is: does America get it’s $20M worth?
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p>Since the gov’t provides about 1/3rd the revenue for CityYear, it means the gov’t is paying about $1.30-$1.70/hr for the work these kids do. They pay less if any of these kids end up actually paying taxes on their wages.
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p>Yeah, I’d say the gov’t is getting it’s money’s worth. You can’t buy many school tutors for $1.70/hr.
My 20 year old son has taken a year off from college this year.. and I am disappointed that he chose not to take a job with … or join City Year. Instead of challenging himself by signing on to City Year’s four- day work week, (assisting in an urban or rural school, working at a federally funded daycare program or with a Big Brother program in California or Chicago)..he is working at the local supermarket deli for $8.50 an hour…for 30 hours/week with ..no benefits.. and getting no paid training in the political process, the economy or goverment policies.
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p>(City Year participants are also given one day of civic engagement/social issues education each week… Each City Year job thus gives these young students a broader picture of the economy and the culture where they are working ..helping them to see the big picture,and thus become Big Citizens when they leave this one year position.)
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p>Alan Khazei has done this country a huge service by creating and expanding City Year, offering hundreds of thousands of young Americans important work and giving them a chance to make a difference in the real world. No wonder Bill Clinton knew a good thing when he saw it.. and modeled Americorps after Alan’s creation.
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p>We need even more of these wonderful introductory jobs as our young people learn how to become the change this country so badly needs.
Having a real job and working with people with real jobs is a good economic and social education. Seeing the different types of people coming through the check out line everyday is an education on people and how they live.
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p>And he is providing a real service and getting paid for it.
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p>City Year is for kids that can afford it, want to feel good about themselves, and think they’re cool because they work in the “inner city”. Sure it provides some benefits but I would rather see a qualified adults from the neighborhood receive $15.00 to $20.00 per hour reading to kids etc. That would be much more beneficial to the people that need the help.
City Year is most certainly not a 4-day work week. When I was a corps member in 2002-2003, I worked many more than 40 hours a week. Yes, it’s billed as working Mon.-Thurs, and civic engagement training on Fridays. We performed physical service on Fridays: painting murals, building playgrounds, landscaping schools and parks, cleaning up public spaces (trash, used condoms, needles, you name it), as well as civic training. Most days I was there until 6 or 7 at night, and often we worked on the weekends as well for special events.
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p>I always say that City Year is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and it was the BEST thing I’ve ever done. It exposed me to people and communities I never otherwise would have experienced. Lugging lumber, trash, and paint cans around was never the hardest job there. The program challenged my own prejudices, my views of society, equality, justice, and public service. I learned discipline and dedication, and that I had more courage, compassion, and ability to work hard than I realized. City Year created profound change in my outlook on life and my response to social problems.
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p>When I was there I got to meet many people who were pushing for social change through the political system. I met President Bill Clinton, many Boston City Councilors, candidates for President,and was even invited to Mitt Romney’s gubernatorial inauguration. and that is when I fell in love with politics. I never would be on this blog reading about elections if it weren’t for City Year.
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p>I think Alan is a good guy, and he’s been a terrific advocate for national funding of public service. However, I believe that Martha Coakley is a better candidate, and I will be voting for her.
Coakley is my second choice and I will vote for her if she wins the nomination, but I tremendously respect the fact that you value her considerable government experience over some hip ‘outsider’ with lots of catchy aphorisms about change and challenging the system. I think it is really important for people to choose between the two serious and experienced candidates, with this ad Khazei is clearly showing he is just as manipulative and egotistical as Pags, just without the conservative baggage (Khazei’s political advocacy is arguably more of a mystery-at least we know where Pags stood-what about Alan?).
If you think that “I created 15,000 new jobs” might be a bit misleading without context I can see that. If you’re critical of the jobs themselves, I wouldn’t be too harsh. It does seem more like volunteerism plus stipend as opposed to a “real job” and I don’t know if CityYear ever pretended otherwise. However, if the alternative is kids out on the streets with nothing to do that could lead to trouble, so I know which option I would pick.
He created 15,000 positions that pay less than minimum wage and qualify recipients for food stamps. That’s not a job as most people understand the term.
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p>I agree it is a fine form of public service.
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p>I actually wasn’t sure that I understood the issue clearly, but it seems, unfortunately, that I did.
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p>With that in mind I can state, as I did not do previously, that this is hardly the best foot forward for Khazei’s first campaign commercial.
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p>His opponents can eat him alive for this claim.
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p>Who does Khazei think he is, one of the Waltons?
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these aren’t jobs in the sense that you could raise a family with one. Although I do think this would be a great experience for a young adult or someone who has some other source of support… like parents.
GOP candidates, especially ones with business backgrounds, seem to run on the claim that, in the private sector, they created N jobs. Our society certainly needs entrepreneurs, but being a good entrepreneur, like being a good dentist, doesn’t necessarily make on a good Senator.
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p>It’d seem to me that the good City Year has done is certainly worth touting as a sign of being a Good Person, but to talk about these as jobs, well, maybe not so much.
City Year is a good program, a solid character-building experience for young people, low pay notwithstanding. What confounds me is how he managed to rake in a $315,000 salary at this non-profit, whether he co-founded it or not. Doesn’t that seem just a bit greedy? Billionaire Pagliuca, not that I’m supporting him, is at least in the for-profit sector.
Running large, complicated non profits requires a lot of skills and energy. $315k is a lot of money, to be sure, but compared to the size and scope of the organization, I don’t think it’s completely out of whack. If salaries were capped low in nonprofit work, you’d lose a lot of the best nonprofit employees. I don’t think they should be grossly overcompensated — like private sector execs — but if you’re in charge of a successful nonprofit that spends tens of millions of years, you deserve decent compensation.
Isn’t the message to the City Year workers – give up money, and work for something that matters?
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p>If he gets paid 315k, would he be unwilling to do the job for 250k? 200k? 150k?
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p>I understand it’s a large, complicated non profit, but the core of its mission is getting large numbers of people to accept substandard wages in exchange for doing something good for society. Is it weird that the head of the organization doesn’t apply the same rules to himself?
Maybe $315k for him is $15k for a City Year volunteer.
You said: “Maybe $315k for him is $15k for a City Year volunteer.”
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p>If he has that much money, why is he taking a salary at all? Why not work like Bloomberg, or Corzine, and do it for free? Surely City Year could find a home for that 315k – like hiring 21 more people at 15k each…
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p>Here’s the thing – I have no problem with Khazei’s salary. He runs a large organization, works hard, and has for a number of years. He shouldn’t have to live hand to mouth.
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p>My point is that there’s some irony in the difference between what he asks of City Year folks (live hand to mouth for a year in order to make a difference) and the salary he pays himself (315k is not hand to mouth anywhere I’m aware of).
What could these kids make on the “free market”? Maybe twice what CityYear pays ’em? What could Khazei make on the “free market”? Maybe twice what CityYear pays him. If that’s the case — that he is taking a substantial pay cut to work CityYear — than I don’t see any irony.
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p>I just see the tired old claim that people whose jobs happen to also have a public benefit are also somehow expected to work for less money, as if the karma leprechaun deposits salary supplementing gold coins in management’s mail slots to compensate for their lower-than-their-skills-warrant salaries.
$315K makes you rich. You have much more than you need to survive. Although I don’t know how Khazei spends his money, he probably has more than his share of luxury items and is able to live a pretty luxurious lifestyle. Many of the people Khazei is purporting to serve (inner-city residents of poorer communities) don’t even have enough to pay their rent on a monthly basis. There’s a disconnect here, whether or not it’s “tired.”
Well the head of the Ayn Rand Foundation, which possibly requires similar levels of skill and energy, makes $345K. I know this because I spent a while trying to find statistics on compensation for heads of non-profits. I’d want to know quartiles, maybe medians. Instead, the only statistics I could find are averages. I’d expect that there a large number of fairly small non-profits just eking by with possibly part-time leadership. If that’s so, the average will be misleadingly small.
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p>In any case, from what I read, $200K sounds like a more typical salary for a person of his position. I wish I could offer more than premonitions, though.
in the preceding year his salary was listed as about $241,000. A big leap in one year.
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p>In any event, it’s roughly a $50 million organization. I don’t have much insight into what CEOs of similary-sized NFPs get paid.
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p>2. He’s taking a bloated salary.
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p>Who cares what other NFP CEOs are making yearly? How many of them are running for Senate? Our country just spent BILLIONS of tax dollars bailing out companies that had CEOs who took bloated salaries and bonuses.
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p>Before you jump on me for comparing $315,000 to the millions taken by those in the finance industry, let me make it clear that I only mean to compare the motivation, mindset and attitude behind these actions.
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p>We cannot elect someone who touts public service and takes a disproportionate amount of their companies earnings for themselves.
Prior to the bailouts, the problem with salaries were not their size but that they rewarded the wrong thing — and in general we want to leave most things up to the market otherwise we end up recreating GOSPLAN and giving EdgarTheArmenian heartburn.
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p>I don’t see any merit in making a virtue out of ignorance of the market for NFP CEOs. If his organization was of a size and complexity for which $315k constitutes typical CEO compensation, there should be nothing wrong with him receiving the market rate.
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p>As I wrote above, I have no idea what the market rate is. Let’s find that out. Until then the posse could maybe play some more poker.
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p>The market rate is not determined by what you or I regard as “outrageous”. Were that the yardstick, social workers, teachers, and nurses would be paid much more and corporate lawyers much less. Under capitalism — even under liberal capitalism — the market and not morality determines prices.
I wish the markets were the determinate of prices. The government affects prices with taxes and other mechanisms constantly. For the most part I’m OK with it, markets adjust to stable influences like taxes. I have trouble when the government jumps in and out as with programs like cash for clunkers and bail-outs. Don’t mean to get off topic though.
I’d be willing to see somebody make a lot of money if they can drive Edgarthearmenian crazy…
Really, Ryan?
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p>Where will the go to – the dreaded private sector, where Cong. Frank proposes capping salaries?
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p>On a percentage basis – how much of that salary was taxpayer money, i.e., x percentage of dollars of the City Year budget comes from the Commonwealth, we paid to subsidize kids volunteering, not padding gentleman’s salary?
for the money. It’s about service.
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p>I actually do think they should be paid more than that, but there’s this expectation by some, especially on the left, that people who serve should do so for next to nothing in monetary compensation, because the ‘compensation’ is all about do gooderism. While I may disagree with that notion personally, I don’t think Khazei should be taken to task for this commercial. The service the people do ends up being far more important than the wages they earn, which doesn’t diminish the fact that these are 15,000 people participating in poor local economies that otherwise wouldn’t have been, at in part because of Khazei.
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p>That’s still economic growth, whether you consider the work they do or their personal imprint on the economy, which is often considerably higher than their wages.
Exactly. You don’t do City Year for the money. So while it’s undoubtedly a valuable service organization and these kids are making commendable contributions through their work, it seems dishonest to try to pass what are obviously volunteer positions off as “newly created jobs.” It’s a bold claim to say you’re providing 15,000 new jobs in an economy with record-setting unemployment rates. But voters who are out of work and looking to support themselves and their families aren’t going to find any comfort in the fact that Khazei is paying 15,000 people a stipend for volunteer work.
AmeriCorps/City Year are service organizations modeled after the Peace Corps. All three compensate their members with a living allowance, in-kind support (e.g. apparel, phone service, computers), health benefits, student loan deferments, and a post-service award.
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p>Peace Corps members earn a $6,000 post-service award which they can use for pretty much anything they want. The typically younger CityYear/AmeriCorps members get a $4,725 post-service award which can be used for college tuition or to re-pay student loans.
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p>Such organizations do not advertise or pay an “hourly wage” like WalMart or CVS; the living allowance is based on the local cost of living. Their full-time employees (who supervise AmeriCorps/CityYear members or who recruit Peace Corps volunteers, etc.) also are not offered or paid an hourly wage, they get a salary.
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p>Consistent with their mission, such service organizations promote the service jobs they offer with messages like, “The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love” (Peace Corps) “Give a Year, Change The World” (CityYear) and “Your World, Your Chance to Make it Better” (AmeriCorps). Indeed, the Peace Corps motto is “Hard Work, Low Pay, Miserable Conditions.”
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p>Nevertheless, AmeriCorps/City Year currently have waiting lists of people who want to join, and schools want more of them tutoring their kids.
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p>Your hourly wage “analysis” misses the entire purpose and mission of these non-profit, civic-minded organizations (see also Drucker, Peter)
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p>According to its website, CityYear has 19 US sites and 1 in South Africa with 2 more US sites set to open, and a roughly 47 million budget. Khazei’s $315K salary is not at all out of line for a 20-year CEO of organization this size (the page you linked to, BTW, gives City Year it’s highest performance rating).
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p>But as Oscar Wilde said, “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”
Essentially you have proven Bob’s point. City Year is a great organization and a great achievement, and Alan should have told its story rather than gone for the cynical shortcut the ad takes. I’m not sure that it’s more misleading than any other “jobs created” claim from a candidate, but it is misleading.
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Which is precisely what Bob was apparantly too lazy to check before posting.
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p>Anyone who hasn’t been asleep since the Peace Corps was founded knows exactly what AmeriCorps, City Year, VISTA and similar jobs offer. They advertise themselves proudly and remain highly-popular to the point that there are more applicants than spots.
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p>One has to be willfully uninformed to pretend these aren’t legitimate highly sought-after jobs; I would expect an official BMG blogger makes at least some effort at fact-checking.
But they’re short-term, low-paying jobs. How many of the 15,000 still exist?
It’s no strike against the Peace Corps/AmeriCorps/CityYear that they offer difficult, low-paying jobs in challenging places for a set time period –that is precisely what they advertise and the reason so many people want them.
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p>A health care worker who serves a 2-year stint in Central America for the Peace Corps, or a year in Detroit for AmeriCorps is performing work as legitimate as a salaried for-profit hospital employee.
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p>The AmeriCorps and CityYear jobs not only still exist, but have increased with the Ted Kennedy Serve America Act. That’s why the CityYear is expanding into 2 more cities (according to their web site, anyway).
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p>All of these facts are easy to check –took me about 10 minutes– rather than adopting the Sarah Palin attitude of running-down community organizers and activists.
You’re not discussing this honestly. Running down community organizers? Please.
These are not ‘jobs’ in any actual, tangible, traditional definition of the phrase. These are temporary service jobs that give out of work college graduates something to do with their time while they wait to go to grad school or to a real job. I have many good friends who worked in the City Year program who say it was a wonderful program, even a few friend of friends who met their spouses there. I am not knocking the program. That said none of these people viewed their time there as a job, none would argue the point of City Year is to create jobs, rather it is to help rebuild our communities.
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p>Khazei really dropped the ball on this one. Isn’t his whole appeal that he isnt your typical politician or candidate? Running on an obscure issue (community service) and making it sexy is a great ‘outside the box/beltway’ idea that could set him apart and is the main reason so many ‘do gooders’ are gravitating to his candidacy. Instead he uses the traditional talking point that he ‘created”jobs’ to make a recession afflicted general public excited that he will help address their bread and butter concerns. These are not jobs that will help working families get into the middle class, and those are the jobs the ads imply he created, those are the jobs he wants to imply he created, and its sadly cynical and manipulative when he could have and should have simply said what his program did and why it qualifies him to be Senator.
If I were a 30 or 40-something with a family and was unemployed, if I saw the commercial I’d be anti-Khazei and anti-Cityyear.
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p>After all, I’m looking for a job, and he’s using teenagers like farmers and construction workers use undocumented Hispanics. No wonder I can’t get a job — these kids are taking 15,000 of ’em!
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p>It all hinges on the use of the word “job” and the context therein.
And that’s why its completely misleading. Like I said I would respect Khazei more if he simply ran on his record-I created a great service program that helped communities and young people. Instead he is trying to make this into something different and it won’t work. Hmm misleading advertisements seems like politics as usual to me-at least with Capuano I have a voting record to examine and you know actually know where my candidate stands and what he has done. Khazei is clearly a cipher.
Being a city year volunteer is exactly that, volunteering. It is not a job in any meaningful sense. Sure they give you miserly stipend, so that you don’t starve, but that’s about it.
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p>The whole non-profit sector is rife with these sort of positions. They assume, correctly, alas, that because they’re “doing good” they can get away with treating their workers like shit and pay them a poverty wage. If non-profit CEOs can rake in salaries comparable to their private sector counterparts, the same should be true of the people who are actually doing the work on the ground.
So perhaps he should just say “I’ve created 15,000 volunteer positions”. Perhaps that would be more reality based. Perhaps less suggestive and more precise.
“The whole non-profit sector is rife with these sort of positions.”
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p>The FOR-profit sector is ALSO rife with these sorts of positions. Meat-packing, grocery stores, industrial farm-labor, Dunkin Donuts, etc are very often paying their workers poverty wages. Even more so when you consider how many of the service jobs are only available part-time.
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p>I think we have to realize that in this country, working is no real guarantee that you are escaping poverty. Whatever waste or scarcity that is causing poverty in the first place, also extends into the non-profit world.
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p>I’d like to ask: Why can’t the government sponsor “jobs” that pay a living wage for people to tutor children, work at food pantries, or paint schoolyard murals. What’s the limiting factor?
…first off, I’m voting for Alan. Given his track record and his approach to solving problems, I was a supporter the second I heard he was running.
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p>But the campaign is pandering to the issue of the political season, “jobs” instead of hammering home at Alan’s “big citizen” message. I suspect there was a fair amount of internal discussion about whether to spin Alan’s accomplishments into the topic of the day–jobs, or to drive home his unique message. It’s a tough call…but I think it’s a mistake to spin the jobs angle for a couple of reasons. First, it exposes the claim to legitimate critiques like Bob’s and the bad karma that goes along with it. Secondly, and more importantly, because “jobs” is the issue de jour, Alan’s message is now pretty much the same as the other three and he fails to break through the clutter of the field.
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p>Everyone understands that Alan is the long shot in this short campaign cycle and the only way…THE ONLY WAY…he has a chance of winning is to show he is different from the career politicians and self-funded vanity candidates that we always choose from. The reality is: Alan and his approaches are different and original. Yet this ad is just another blah, blah, jobs, blah, Sen. Kennedy, blah, blah, jobs, blah, blah, blah. Play to your strengths and lose on your own terms, instead of losing based on what the polls indicate people want to hear.
But I want to add that I read this thread before watching the ad and was struck that it is not an ad about creating jobs, as reading this thread led me to believe. It’s an ad about creating opportunities to serve. Yes, the language could be much better and Skeffington is 100% correct that Khazei could and should be bolder. But he is not making some claim that his strength is that he’s a CEO whose job creation experience is why he should be elected. He’s talking about service being a priority.
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p>The casual viewer, I think, would understand that ad as being about creating new jobs. Yes, they’re jobs about service, but the point is that they’re jobs, and everyone wants to hear about jobs. I think Frank’s assessment of the ad is entirely correct.