Medford City Council’s bid to create a compensation ordinance hits a snag

Fair compensation for contracted janitorial and security services is what the Medford City Council is looking for with its Compensation Ordinance, but the administration, at first blush, doesn’t appear to be on the same page. 

“These workers provide vital services for city residents, but don’t enjoy the same wage standards and job protections that municipal employees have,” said Srirama Varanasi, a political coordinator for 32JB SEIU, the property services union. “We recently saw how the lack of protections can harm this workforce and the city.”

The Compensation Ordinance was first introduced in December 2025 just a few months after the Medford Public School district decided to change janitorial contractors, moving from a union contractor to a non-union contractor, Varanasi explained during a recent City Council meeting. 

Councilor George Scarpelli said they took up the compensation ordinance because they saw a group of employees who were “killing themselves at Medford High School as custodians” who were then unceremoniously moved along in favor of non-union employees. 

“I looked at this ordinance in totality and said, ‘This protects the working people of our community, and I will support this ordinance,’” he said. 

When the non-union contractor took over, 14 janitors lost their jobs, Varanasi said, adding that many of them have since received job offers, but at $16 an hour and with no benefits.

“You know, the termination of long standing service employees not only hurts the impacted workers and their families, but it hurts the city as well, right?” Varanasi said.

City Council President Zac Bears noted janitorial and security services are not done by municipal employees; they are contracted out.

The council-backed Compensation Ordinance aims to make sure that when the city hires contracted workers, they are paid fairly and sustainably by setting a baseline pay rate. Bears said there are other provisions to the ordinance, but that is the core.  

The ordinance is not unusual. Bears said there are a number of communities that already have an ordinance in various forms, such as Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. 

However, while they’ve had a number of meetings with stakeholders, members of the administration, folks at 32JB SEIU, and KP Law, the firm the city contracts with since the city solicitor position has gone unfilled, the ordinance is still in limbo.

Why?

Bears said a draft of the ordinance sent to KP Law included changes that went beyond the tweaking stage, venturing into what he called policy changes. 

He said the main pieces that were changed or omitted from the council’s draft centered around labor peace, which he called a priority, and transitional employment, helping employees ease out if a contract is rebid or if possible, move to a new contract. But perhaps most significantly was the change to the baseline pay the council had set in the ordinance. 

“So, it included an hourly wage sufficient for a family of four to live at or above the federal poverty level, that was removed,” Bears said. 

It was replaced, he added, with a standard hourly rate definition.

Varanasi argued the original version of the proposed ordinance established a fair wage and ensured a modest increase over the rate the janitors made prior to termination while the KP Law revision would set a standard well below what they were making a year ago. He said the new law shouldn’t undercut the area standards. 

Peter Enrich, emeritus law professor at Northeastern University, said that as a former selectman in Lexington, he understands the fiscal pressures the city is facing and that the argument for finding less expensive services is important.

“But, it’s, at the same time, tremendously important to recognize the dignity and the lives of the people who are doing some of the most important, if some of the least pleasant, jobs that need to be done to make a municipality operate,” he said. “And the protections that are suggested, both in terms of a true reasonable wage and prevailing wage is probably the most effective way to get at that.”

Councilor Anna Callahan asked Enrich if he could give a broad view of the differences between the council’s proposal and KP Law’s version. 

“Sure, the KP Law draft is a much, much narrower proposed ordinance,” he said. “It really only deals with compensation levels.”

Enrich said the KP Law version failed to address the other priorities set by the council, which were worker retention provisions and the labor peace protections. 

Councilor Justin Tseng, who worked on the ordinance with Bears, said for him, it’s all pretty straight forward. 

“When Medford spends public money, I don’t think we should be using that money to push down wages or shortchange the people doing the work,” he said.

He said it’s easy for people in City Hall to think of these things like abstract budget line items, but in reality, it is people that are showing up every day and keeping city-owned buildings, including the schools, running.

Tseng said passage of the ordinance sets a floor, a basic standard on wages, benefits and paid leave.

“And we’re not tying these to pie in the sky standards … we’re anchoring them to federal benchmarks and existing collective bargaining agreements,” he said. 

He also made a motion to send the red-lined version of the ordinance from KP Law to the council’s regular session.

The City Council was expected to take up the ordinance again on May 12.