Unbelievably (to me) I am confronted directly with people at my job who think I and my family do not deserve healthcare. And I work at a church.
My employer, a church of which I am also a member, is considering either reducing my hours in order to get me below the 30 hours necessary to trigger benefits, changing their benefits policy so that I would not be eligible for benefits, or changing their benefits policy so that my spouse would not be eligible for benefits.
I work three different jobs at this institution: Soprano Soloist, Assistant Director of Family Ministry and Webmaster. Each of those positions alone does not reach the 30 hour level, but all together I work 35 hours a week (on paper). Of course, that would be the minimum amount I work as we often have "hell weeks" where I just have to be there every night or all weekend and I build up quite a bit of overtime, for which I take comp time at other times of the year. Because of budget issues we have been asked not to do overtime, but there is just no way to walk away from the children's programs that we administer or the family events and leave my boss and friend with everything, whether I have run out of hours or not. Hey, it's my church, too!
The church is having some budget issues aside from that. Giving is actually up, but of course, so are expenses. The congregation, like the country, falls into two camps: conservatives and liberals. Cutters and stimulators. And this week quite clearly like Teapartiers and Progressives. They have gone off the deep end.
My parallel to our country really works, though. There is a group who feels that since we have less revenue than expected, we should cut things to live within our means. And that group is also served most by an Associate Pastor who can do hospital visits, Bible studies for retired folks and bridge club and such. They do not generally use the Family Ministry Department (children and youth and families with same) for anything and they do not generally use the Internet. So they question my value as Assistant Director and also as Webmaster.
They are also firmly convinced that the $10,000 per year that they pay for their Webmaster is outrageously expensive, especially since the Men's Club website only costs $257 for a whole year!
These folks are highly offended that the Associate Pastor position has been underfunded in the 2010 budget. They are also in the same age group as the Church Secretary, also a member, whose hours have been reduced as well, and are offended by that. They are blaming my existence for these cuts.
The other side is our young families. I say young, but these days those are 30-something and 40-something families with two working parents and young children, many below school age. This is quite different from when the older people had little children. They had a stay-at-home parent and were much younger in general. But that is beside the point. The young families today do not have the kind of volunteer time that the older folks had when their kids were small.
But these families benefit from many, many, many programs that we offer at our church all of which are complicated and time-consuming to administer: an Outreach Program with a full schedule of Dance, Art, Spanish and Yoga classes; Vacation Bible School; Variety Shows; Carnivals; Game Nights and Camping Trips. We also have a program for children with special needs.
The Director of Family Ministry is in charge of all the program development and is very busy with that. She has also been tasked in this fiscal year with developing and running the Youth programs (until the middle of last year we had a full-time Youth Director position which is not funded this year). She also is in charge of all Children's Music. She's doing plenty and more. She hardly has a life at all and that is with an Assistant (me).
We also have a constantly updated website with videos and new features, blogs and online registration forms with which I am trying to create a Web Ministry which brings in new members and new virtual members every day. I am continually soliciting and providing content, attending events to take photos and video, making sure that the calendars and articles are current and useful. Sure, they pay me for this. What would they pay someone else? I don't even know. I'm sure I'm under market, especially considering I created the website from nothing (but templates) in 5 weeks with no previous experience with html.
We could stimulate our economy by NOT curtailing these activities but supporting them, increase revenues by increasing the number of people contributing. Bring new people in through Outreach and Website and thereby have enough money to pay for their Associate Pastor and maybe even a Youth Director.
So the older folks are mad: they have lost their beloved (by me, too) Associate Pastor until they can fund the position properly. Their friend the Secretary has been severely reduced. They want what they want and that's fine.
The younger folks are mad: they are about to lose programs--there is no way one person can run our office and Children's Music and Youth and Events. Their website is in danger of disappearing since no one before me ever had the time to update their old site. When I came in in January of '09, it had not been touched since April. Not touched. As in on March 31st, unbeknownst to me, everything I had not put up myself expired.
The thing the conservative faction is not thinking about is: Where does church growth come from? Young families, Outreach programs and Website. What do I do? Family Ministry, Outreach programs and Website. Do the older people invite new families to try our church? Folks their age don't change churches unless they move. How do you raise more revenue? Attract new members. How do you attract new members? Again, Outreach programs and Website.
But the big obstacle in the situation is my health insurance benefits. Which honestly is why I took the job in the first place, since all three of my positions would get me over the threshhold and my husband is basically uninsurable on the individual market. They are struggling with whether I am valuable enough--as a person? as an employee?--to deserve the benefits to which I am legally entitled.
This was the hard thing for me to hear in a very angry public meeting we had this week. To have people actually say out loud "Why does she get benefits?" "What does she do every day?" "Why are we paying for a website when a volunteer could do it?" Just to get me below the threshhold. It was like, it felt like, "She does not deserve to be treated this well. We are treating her too well."
Why doesn't everyone deserve healthcare? I just don't get it. They don't think I do, they don't think my husband does. I would buy him into Medicare in a New York minute if that were available. Heaven forbid my children were on their plan (we still qualify for SCHIP), they would decide my children don't deserve healthcare. Is that Christian? Is that humane?
The waters have been tested: would I accept my husband being removed from the plan? No. Would I accept losing the Webmaster position? No. Would I accept them not paying any of my dependent premium but leaving him on the plan? No.
This is my line in the sand. I would go back to poverty (more than now) and worry and fear rather than work in an environment where I am so unvalued that they could make these decisions. I would go to work in despair, I would give up the freedom to go on field trips and volunteer at my kids' school to give and give and give more to the very people who do not think I am their social equal. That I am less deserving than they because they have more money than I.
I have worked as a singer at this church since 2001. I have worked in their offices since January 20, 2009. I considered these people as part of my family. Clearly some of them do not do likewise. I had a hint of this in the process of eliminating the Youth Director position and perhaps I should not be surprised. But is it unreasonable to expect Christians to act like Christians?
Thanks for reading. It's been a really tough week with a lot of ugliness. But there was actually at least as much support for me in the meeting as there was criticism and that felt great. Perhaps it will all work out, perhaps in a month I will have resigned. This is not going to be fun. I love my job and look forward to it every day. I would really like that to continue.
Edited to be less gratuitously offensive to conservatives.