REFERENDUM PETITION DRIVE: 2010-33

REFERENDUM PETITION DRIVE: 2010-33
[petition attached for you to sign and return - see instructions below]

To add your name to the attached petition which will afford you the Sault Tribe Member Constitutional right to vote to approve or disapprove of the Board actions to raise the top paid employees: Just print out the attached form, sign your name, print your name, and write in your address in the section under 'Signatures of Eligible Voters.' Do not write above this section. Then mail this petition to me at: Aaron A. Payment, 1716 Shunk Road, Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783).

HERE IS THE ISSUE: On Tuesday - February 2, 2010, with a majority of the Board voting, the Board passed resolution 2010-33 to give pay adjustments to a select group of people for a total cost of $700,000!

At a time when:

* Most lower level staff in the Tribe have not received a pay increase since Chairperson Payment left office;
* Our Elders received a pay cut on their annual dividend of nearly 66% or $1,000;
* Sault Tribe college student scholarships were slashed from 800 a year to just 200;
* The Membership funeral assistance was cut for all but the very low income and reduced by 33%;
* The Tribal Board pay has remained the same while the Tribal Board meetings have been cut in 1/2....

....it seems extravagant to increase the pay of those who are already the highest pay and wealthiest employees of the Sault Tribe. The vast majority of these folks are non-Tribal people.

CAPITALISM AND FAIR MARKET VALUE?

Don't confuse this issue with increasing the wealthiest of Sault Tribe employees with anti-capitalism. You have to pay folks what they are worth and what the market will bear. The higher-ups in the medical staff within Sault Tribe employment, however,

* Do not work the hours that outside doctors do (30 versus 60 hours a week);
* They do not deal with emergent care situations;
* They do not have hospital privileges for continuity of care during hospitalizations;,
* They are usually working off students loans from the federal government that require that they work for a tribe;
* They are allowed time during the work day to do charts and during this time, are not seeing patients.

The truth of the matter is that several of the medical staff have been complaining for years that they are not paid well enough and have threatened to leave to work elsewhere. The reality is that if they were worth the extra pay, they should take outside jobs so we could then recruit and hire Sault Tribe members who have earned medical degrees but continually get passed over for jobs. One Sault Tribe Member doctor, left employment as her pay level continuously lagged behind that of non-Natives at our clinics. Currently, I do not know of any Sault Tribe members who work as doctors in our clinics.

CHRONOLOGY OF THIS ISSUE:

1996 - Upon first elected to the Sault Tribe Board, Unit 1 Board Member Payment noticed some serious irregularities in the way Sault Tribe employees received raises. Where the casino manager's three sons all received greater than 20% raises, most employees received an average raise of 3.5%. Two of these individuals sit on the Tribal Election Committee and are Director Cathy Abramson's nephews and Director Hoffman's first cousins;

1997 - Unit 1 Board Member Payment, proposed an overhaul in how wage and salary policy was conducted to ensure that employees received at least a minimum raise to keep pace with the cost of living while setting a maximum raise of 5% for the top employees, if the maximum was set at 5% for the lowest paid employees;

1998 - Bouschor commissions and outside study by Arthur Anderson (remember them with the corruption scandals with Enron?). It was no surprise that the results told Bouschor what he wanted to hear - "Pay the top people, including himself, even more."

2000 - Bouschor then commissions a second study by BGI Inc. to do another study to try to boost the top paid folks even more. They came back with a set of recommendations which held the top pay at bay, while recommending the lower paid staff be increased. Instead of raising the lower paid folks, Bouschor set an average raise amount for budgeting purposes and put a performance based system in place;

2003 - Vice Chairperson Payment introduces a resolution to redistribute the budgeted pay amounts for the top paid employees to increase the percent increase for the lowest paid employees. Bouschor fights this as many of his campaign supporters and immediately family are the highest paid employees in the Tribe - including himself at $245,000 for Chairperson/CEO then at $800,000 as COO of Greektown Casino;

2004 - Before leaving office and stealing $2.66 million to pay 7 of his closest friends, Bouschor also adjusted a select group of employees to receive huge increases including several who were paid out severances. No market study was done and no justification provided. Did he do this to fraudulently increase the annual raises of those he then gave unwarranted severances to in order to ensure they received a greater payout? At Chairperson Payment's suggestion, those individuals who received unjustified adjustments were put back to their old pay level which saved the Tribe $300,000 annually;

2004 - The Payment administration establishes a Wage and Salary committee comprised of a variety of employees including lower level wage earners. The committee recommends to the board to adopt a 'decremental' pay increase system whereby the lowest paid employees received 7% increases the first year, while the highest paid received 1% and the middle employees received between a 6% to a 2% raise as their annual income went up. This proposal was self contained and did not cost more money than what was already budgeted;

2006 - After much complaining by the highest paid and wealthiest paid employees in the Tribe, the Tribal Board caved and granted larger increases for the top paid employees at the expense of the lower paid employees. Thus, those over $100,000 received 2% raises so the lower paid employees were dropped back down to 5% raises;

2009 - After the current Tribal Administration took over, the lowest paid employees report that they have not received increases at all while Bernard Bouschor publishes an article in the Sault Tribe News that announces big raises were coming for the higher paid medical staff.

2010 - A majority of the Board votes to give the highest paid employees a huge raise in the amount of tens of thousands of dollars. The total costs? $700! Reports indicate that the Medical Director was raised from $150,000 annually to $180,000. The dentist rose from $140,000 to $160,000!