Carbon County took the first step in creating a new wage scale for its employees.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners adopted new salary scales for non-union supervisory and nonsupervisory county personnel and authorized the forwarding of these scales to county row officers, as well as the county salary board for implementation at the scheduled annual salary board meeting on Jan. 3.

Following the vote, each row officer and the courts were given packets containing the complement of the new pay scales, as well as descriptions on where it is believed the employee now will be set at.

The new scale uses a number of factors, including job description, number of employees supervised by an individual and responsibilities, to better determine where that employee should fall on the scale.

Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said that the new scales start nonsupervisory wages $13; while supervisory will start at $16. Currently, the starting salary for the lowest grade nonsupervisory position is $11.38 per hour.

In addition, the number of steps in each grade of the scale was consolidated, from 21 to 16 steps respectively.

The new scale also factors in annual cost of living increases based on the Consumer Price Index for the year, Lukasevich said, meaning that in the future, if the CPIU goes up and is adopted by the board, the starting wages also increase to reflect that cost of living hike.

The final say on how this is implemented will be on Jan. 3, when the board meets with row officers and court officials to set the salaries for the year.

At that time, motions will be made to set the salaries based on the new wage scale for each position; as well as row officers will have the opportunity to make motions to adjust an employee’s pay scale based on the responsibilities of the office.

“I think the most important thing is going to be what they received (in the complement) and what’s going to come up in the annual salary board on the actual agenda motions,” Lukasevich said after the meeting.

The new scale only effects nonunion employees. Members of the county unions will still be under collective bargaining agreements that are negotiated.

Carbon County has been working on new wage scales since it hired Evergreen Carbon County hired Evergreen in July 2021 at a cost of $48,000.

The goal of the study was to look at the positions of the approximate 400 employees and determine a proper compensation scale across all departments for the same type of positions.

Lukasevich said that Evergreen looked at 25 counties to help create a comparison that was able to be used in determining the new scale.

He also noted that the report is not fully complete, but Evergreen had enough information for the county and the county human resources department to move forward on the matter.

The last study regarding employee salary rates was adopted in the 1990s, and since then, the system has been piecemealed because positions evolved and more and more titles were created.

Carbon County first discussed moving on a survey looking at employment classifications at the beginning of 2021 after a suggestion at the annual salary board by President Judge Roger Nanovic because of turnover rates due to higher wages in other counties.

DA looking for salary report