There's this group of seniors that works at the EPA, and it seems like they really like it. They just don't like the insanely low wages they're getting paid. Today. On Parts per Billion, we look at the agency's practice of hiring retirees and try to figure out whether this is a win win or a win lose. Hello, and welcome back once again to Parts per Billion, the Environmental Podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz. It's not always easy to find a job when you're in
your fifties or sixties, or beyond your skills. Maybe don't line up with what employers want. And let's face it, age discrimination is a thing. The EPA created a program that's designed to address this problem and several others. It's called the Senior Environmental Employment Program, and it's relatively unique among federal agencies. Most agencies are willing to hire back their former employees after they retire on a contract basis.
Through this program, however, the EPA will hire any senior, whether they've worked at the agency or not, to do basic administrative duties in some cases, even more complex stuff. The EPA sees this as a win win for everyone. It frees up the time of its regular employees to do more complicated work, and it gives seniors work experience and a chance to earn a little extra income. But as reporter Stephen Lee found out, the key word there
is little. The EPA is paying these seniors jaw droppingly low wages and hasn't changed their pay scale in nearly a decade. Steven spoke with several of the EPA senior workers and they told him they're getting really frustrated with this wage stagnation and they think the program isn't doing
what it was created to do. It's really the intention was to give older workers a chance to be productive in their golden years, lets them keep busy, it lets them earn a little extra money, and at the same time they are contributing their valuable expertise to the EPA, So you know, in theory, it's a win win. And the agency calls it a work experience program and sort of with the suggestion being that it's kind of for people to learn. So who are these people? Are they
former EPA employees or could it just be anyone? Some of them are former EPA employees. You don't have to be you just have to be over the age of fifty five, so they you know, people kind of come from different backgrounds, and it also depends on the type of work you're doing. I mean, it ranges from clerical work, you know, those people tend to come from maybe they worked in an office their entire lives. That's at the low end, and then on the high end you've got
professional and scientific workers. And those tend to be people who have some, if not EPA experience, some kind of government experience. So it sounds like they're doing stuff that's not just kind of menial, like low skilled work. Some of these seniors are actually doing pretty substantive work here. Yeah,
some of them are. I mean I talk to a couple of people who are long term scientists government and scientists, talked to some people who have experience in kind of the mechanics of sort of working in a government bureaucracy. There was one person I spoke to who was involved in handing out certain kinds of permits, and you know, that's a fairly specified type of job. And you know, what this person said is that there's only two people in that office who know how to do that kind
of work. You know process these permits and the other person's a contractor. So in other words, there's no full time EPA employee in this very large regional office that knows how to do the work that this retiree is doing. Okay, so it sounds like they're doing some you know, essential work that maybe a few other people know how to do. How much are they getting paid? There is a pay scale. It starts at seven dollars and twenty seven cents an hour.
That is not what most economists would consider to be a living wage, and it does range up out at eighteen dollars and sixteen cents an hour, so still not a lot of money. And that's for like, that's at the very high end for scientists and professionals. These wage rates were set several years ago by the EPA and they have not been increased since twenty ten. How does the EPA justify such a low salary because I mean these are I mean that's in some states lower than
the minimum wage. Right, It's important to note that it's they're not violating any labor laws in the states where they are paying very low wages. I mean, they are abiding by the law. But they basically say that you know, these wages are fair for the kind of work that people are doing. And they also say that, you know, you cannot compare these wages to the wages of full time EPA employees because the type of work and the responsibilities are so different. Wages are not the only thing
that the these seniors are getting from the government. They're also getting health insurance in some cases. Can you talk about how that works. I mean, that seems, especially for seniors, that's a pretty big benefit. The health insurance, according to the EPA, does not require participants to pay premiums, so that's a good benefit, I'll say. But what I did hear from some retirees is that the deductibles are very high. One person said that her deductibles eighteen hundred dollars and
for catastrophic it's thirty five hundred. So you know, if you're making twenty thousand dollars a year. And the other thing I should mention too, is that this is full time work. For a lot of people. They're working thirty five forty hours a week. They're not just going over to the EPA for a couple hours in the afternoon, so they don't consider that to be a great benefit. So we're going to take a quick break. Now we come back, we'll ask even how the coronavirus pandemic is
affecting this whole situation. Stay tuned. We're back and we're talking with environmental reporter Stephen Lee about the EPA's practice of hiring seniors at very low wages. Steven says, the older workers here don't really have a ton of bargaining power. It's very hard. They have very little bargaining power. They're not in a union, and there's no national organization that
represents them, so there's very little they can do. You're right, Well, the one thing they want is a wage increase, and the EPA has so far not agreed to give them that. And the retirees just have very little ability to force the agency's hand because you know, look, they need these jobs to put food on the table and gas in the tank. And so they're trying to come together in little groups here and there, sort of across the country.
They're writing letters, they're trying to make connections, they're trying to reach the right people, but they have been frustrated by the fact that they have not been able to get much done and it's it's worth mentioning that they also don't want to stir up too much trouble. I mean, these people, for the most part, feel lucky to have these jobs, and they need them to make ends meet.
And it sounds like, you know, they the people who have these jobs, the seniors that you spoke with, feel like they want to be a part of a sort of mission driven organization. Because one of them said, you know, I could be making more money at a car wash than working here. So it must be that there's some sense of pride that they get that you know, keeps them there as opposed to working at a you know,
minimum wage job elsewhere. Yeah, that's absolutely true, and it's true across the board of everyone who works at the EPA. I mean, you know, for the most part, these are people who have desirable, marketable skills. And of course that's not true necessarily across the board. There are some clerical folks, but in general, I mean, the reason that people want to work at the EPA, whether they're retirees or their
full time employees, because they're drawn to the mission. They want to do something that's good for the nation, good for the environment, and so and they are almost uniformly delighted to be working at the EPA. They find it very fulfilling and rewarding, and they feel like they're really contributing to something important. They just want to get a little bit more pay. Let's talk about those other people at the EPA though, I mean the full time employees
who are earning you know, regular federal employee salaries. I have to imagine this isn't great for them either, a because it sort of, you know, erodes their bargaining power, you know, if they want to negotiate for higher wages that the EPA can just say, oh, we'll just have
a sort of senior do this for less pay. But also that it had you know, it has to be frustrating because the agency has had such a reduction in headcount over the last decade or so, and it seems like this is a way that the agency can still do the same, do more with less, or do the same with less. Yeah, some people have said that. Some of the retirees have said, look, I think this is
a way of getting like really cheap labor. You're right, we know that the EPA has been reducing staff, but they also have been reducing the numbers of retirees in this program. And when you talk to regular employees, they for the most part support the retirees. They want to see them get more pay. You know, they work with these people, they have personal relationships with them, they like them, and you're right they say that they have been short
staff for years. These people play an important role in, you know, filling in some of the gaps and doing some of the back office work that is necessary for everything the EPA does. And if you didn't have this kind of core of retirees helping out and you can't hire more people, then you're going to have to transition full time employees into those jobs. So this the presence of these retirees, I think freeze up the full time
employees to do other kinds of work. But finally, I wanted to talk to you about the pandemic because it affects everything and it may affect this. Seniors are of course, you know, some of the people who are the most at risk for complications from contracting the coronavirus, and I have to imagine that you know, it was already difficult to bring these seniors on before because of the wages being so low, and it just feels like that must have been that must be getting even more difficult. Now,
what's going on with that? How is the pandemic and the way it affect seniors affecting this program at the EPA. It's a good question, man, I'm afraid I don't have a great answer. I think you're probably right. It stands to reason. And and the other impact that I think coronavirus is having is that, you know, obviously the economy is creating, and people are increasingly worried about their personal finances,
whatever their jobs are. And again and again I heard that people in this program are really concerned about their job security. So you would imagine that if they were worried about making ends meet before coronavirus, they've got to be even more worried about it. Now, that's a great point. I guess that that you know, on the one hand, you would think it might make you know, it might
reduce the workforce I guess to draw from. But on the other hand, you're right, the want people the seniors who currently fill these jobs would have would be even more you know, hesitant to kind of agitate and to negotiate, so that just puts them in an even tougher situation, right, And you know, what we also know is that there is age discrimination. It's a lot harder to get a
job when you're over a certain age. And you know, the fact is that people are living much longer now, and so you know, it's it's getting harder and harder to have enough money saved up for retirement when you're fifty five or sixty or whatever, however old you are, and you know there's a chance you made to live another thirty forty years. We are seeing more and more people, you know, older people being forced to find other work to sustain themselves. That's it for today's episode of Parts
per Billion. If you want more environmental news, check out our website newstot Bloomberg environment dot com. That website, once again is news dot Bloomberg environment dot com. Today's episode of parsprobillion was produced by myself along with Josh Block and Marissa Horn. Parts per Billion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. Music for today's episode is a Message by Jizarre and Flagwaiver by Alan Morehouse. They're used
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