Prompted by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection's advertisements for oil and gas inspectors with starting salaries of $35,000, 19 environmental inspectors with the agency have filed grievances.
Those grievances cite pay discrimination, higher education and training requirements, tenure and work responsibilities with lower starting pay than recent job postings, according to information from West Virginia Public Workers Union Local 170 in Charleston.
"The low pay, growing vacancies and increasing workloads all contribute to a continuing deterioration of the amount of environmental monitoring and enforcement that inspectors are able to perform," the union stated in a news release. "This, in turn, places public health at greater risk from unregulated pollution of natural resources."
The newly posted positions list no educational requirements, limited travel duties and residence restrictions along with no probationary training.
Environmental inspectors are required to go through a one-year probationary period at a lower pay grade, in contrast to oil and gas inspectors, according to the union, and starting salary is several thousand dollars less than the newly advertised jobs.
Environmental inspectors also are required to be four-year college graduates with degrees in related fields.
Veteran employees have experienced steady increases in work because of vacancies in environmental enforcement climbing to more than 10 percent since the 2005 freeze on pay increases, according to the union.
Environmental inspectors typically are assigned territories of three to 16 counties and are required to relocate and live in one of those assigned counties, according to the union, another contrast from the new oil and gas inspectors.
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