MEMPHIS, Tenn. — When the clock strikes 12 a.m. to ring in the New Year, Memphis Light Gas and Water will get rid of its current security contractor to take on its security operations.
“To fill those vacancies, we will be using part-time employees until we hire full-time employees,” Gale Jones Carson, spokesperson for MLGW, said.
The shift means the more than 100 full-time contracted security guards must reapply for part-time employment with the utility and lose their health care.
“The part-timers won’t have benefits, but they will be making more per hour,” Jones Carson explained.
MLGW claimed the part-time workers will make about $4 more per hour.
However, those employees will work fewer hours every week.
One of the contracted security employees reached out to WREG to say many of them will be going into the new year without a source of income.
“They were in fear that their lives will actually change,” City Councilman Berlin Boyd said.
Boyd, who chairs the city’s MLGW committee, said the changes stem from a security contract bid dispute between the city and MLGW. Boyd said instead of MLGW reposting a request for new security proposals, it took matters into its own hands.
“We were in fear for livable wages being changed and individuals going back from $14-$15 an hour to $8 an hour,” Boyd explained.
Aside from employment issues, Councilwoman Janis Fullilove said the overhaul poses a safety concern.
“As far as security is concerned, you don’t want to make your city, or make your utility, or make the residents of the City of Memphis vulnerable to people who may want to do things to harm them,” Fullilove told WREG over the phone.
However, MLGW said security at its facilities will not be compromised.