'What the hell did I get myself into?' A crisis of Jackson snowplow drivers
'What the hell did I get myself into?' A crisis of Jackson snowplow drivers
By Sophia Boyd-Fliegel
Jackson Hole News&Guide
Via Wyoming News Exchange
JACKSON — Richard Wilson remembers that when he started as a maintenance worker for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, there were promises of cost-of-living raises. Pay and benefits were decent. You had to know somebody to get a job.
From growing up all over the West, working ranches with his family and retiring from the military as a staff sergeant, Wilson was the perfect candidate to maintain and operate the state’s snowplows.
He’s quick to mention his love of running equipment and denounce the younger generation that needs to “get off their high horses” and really work.
But those cost-of-living raises never came. And his landlord, who’d pocketed Wilson’s rent-to-own deposits instead of paying the mortgage, went into foreclosure.
Then the $1,300 per month housing stipend he’d been grandfathered into disappeared, “like it didn’t mean anything,” when Wilson moved out of Teton County.
He called HR and the Wyoming Public Employees Association, but Wilson says he “ran into a stone wall. And the higher ups said, ‘Too bad you moved.’ ”
Fourteen years after he started with WYDOT, Wilson, now operating heavy equipment like 50,000-pound snowplows, is used to working 80 hours a week.
But even as the perfect hire, he’s counting down the days until he can get out.
“I’m vested in this now, so it’s too late to try to start working on a different retirement,” Wilson said. “It’s just like, ‘What the hell did I get myself into?’ ”
State Representative Mike Yin said that lawmakers from the western side of the state are aware of Teton County’s plow driver pay crisis.
“There were cuts last year, and I think a lot of people realize those cuts might have been too deep,” Yin said, adding that WYDOT is one of the agencies the state is trying to fund through a fuel tax.
“[But the] fuel tax does not pay enough for us to maintain it at the moment. It’s something that we have put money into from our general fund. People can be leery about that,” he said.
Senate President Dan Dockstader says how the state will make up the diminishing mineral tax revenue that underwrite state workers’ pay is still an open question.
“Right now wind energy is not taxed. Nuclear energy, as it is proposed now, is not taxed. But at some point we may have to look at moving a tax in to replace what we lose in mineral money,” Dockstader said.
But more sustainable tax legislation could be years out, and Teton County workers say they need relief now.
“They just don’t understand that we’re right on the edge,” said avalanche forecaster Brenden Cronin, 39, now in his fourth season with WYDOT. “We’re one COVID outbreak away from the roads falling apart.”
Cronin’s frustration with state legislators comes from all the people he’s seen walk away from jobs they are proud of because they’re under-compensated and overstressed.
“There are seven departments of transportation that have avalanche forecasting programs for the highway,” Cronin said, but “we are the only ones who are also tasked with plowing and running heavy equipment.”
He remembers nights after 16-hour days, where mistakes can be frequent with equipment that’s dangerous enough to have killed his coworker, Shirley Samuelson, two years ago.
“Once on the rotary plow I forgot to put the thing in four-wheel drive. All of a sudden I’m sliding backwards on the highway,” he said. “The stress comes from just being tired.”
Cronin, whose years as a ski patroller and avalanche educator led him to his job at the state, said he feels especially for the Teton Pass plow drivers.
“I’ve had to do that, and that’s crazy,” Cronin said. “Like I don’t ever want to do it again.”
In the upcoming legislative session, Sen. Mike Gierau says the appropriations committee has recommended a 5.3% pay raise for all state employees.
“In addition to that, we will be seeking adjustments for as many state workers as we can to make up for the fact, a regional cost adjustment and beyond that, to take into account the higher living expense in Teton County,” he said.
That number, though, falls dramatically short of what plowers say they need.
With the private sector paying $30 to $60 per hour for people with commercial drivers licenses, state workers who spoke with the News&Guide said the base rate needed to increase by $10 from about $20 just to begin to compete.
Raises are what Richard Wilson calls the “standing joke” in the office.
“They’ll give us a 1% raise, but they’re going to raise your insurance and retirement contribution 3%,” he said.
The last time Cronin said the state increased his health insurance premium it was by 10%.
“Your benefits don’t put food on the table,” Cronin said.
“I’ve heard rumors over the years that our legislators don’t care about us,” Wilson said. “I’m sure you’ve heard all the old jokes about highway workers and city workers ... All they do is sit around, lean on a shovel and drink coffee. That’s the stigma that we’re stuck with.”
Wilson said he maintains a close relationship with his former adjutant general in the military, Luke Reiner, now head of WYDOT.
“He’s fought tooth and nail for us, basically beating his head against the wall,” Wilson said.
Wilson’s boss in Jackson, foreman Troy Jerup, agreed.
“[Reiner’s] hands are tied. Unless it goes through the legislature, we get nothing,” Jerup said.
It’s because of this bind that Jerup is down two full-time and four part-time positions on a 12-person crew.
“We have four temporaries every winter to help plow snow. This year we weren’t able to hire a single one,” Jerup said.
Most who apply don’t have the typically required training or qualifications.
“We’re getting unqualified people just to work because there is nobody else. Accidents, damaged equipment, all this kind of stuff is just outrageous right now.”
Jerup actually did get one hire to trade his house in West Virginia for a hotel room in Jackson.
“I had him set up at the Super 8. He got as far as Cheyenne, and it was one of them days (the) wind was blowing and I-80 was closed. And he called me and he’s like, ‘I can’t do this.’ He was out of here, didn’t even show up.”
Jerup, who has four kids under 17 and commutes between 45 and 90 minutes to work, has started taking on additional shifts himself to try to keep morale up.
“As the foreman, I’m in this equipment, plowing just as much or more than other guys and it’s really not my job. I’m doing it so that I can try to maintain some decent roads.”
Yet, he says, he’s seen the staffing shortage coming, saying it’s “not been a secret for the last five, six years.”
In the last few years the Town of Jackson has been responsible for plowing state highways in town, from High School Road on the south to Dairy Queen at the north end.
“They still basically ask us for help, which is kind of unfair to me, because you’re getting paid now to do that job and we do help. So I think it’s just a really embarrassing situation for the state,” Jerup said.
“I’ve been here for 14 years, and I can remember one raise in all those years,” Jerup said. “We’ve been pushing and pushing to get raises for us. But ultimately it’s up to legislators.”
As for the 80-hour work weeks, Richard Wilson says his military training has helped him withstand sleep deprivation.
“Maybe it’ll catch up with me,” he says, “Maybe it won’t.”
This story was published on Jan. 26, 2022.