Cherokee Nation budgeted for 526 unfilled jobs
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| Seal of the Cherokee Nation |
By Travis Snell
Assistant Editor
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – During these tough economic times, millions of people are struggling to find jobs. For many Cherokees, the Cherokee Nation may be the answer to their unemployment problems as the tribe’s fiscal year 2010 budget contains money for 526 unfilled positions.
According to Tribal Council records, the 2010 budget – which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 – contains 412 vacant positions from the 2009 budget and 114 new positions. Those 526 jobs are budgeted for about $24 million dollars in salary and benefits, or about 15 percent of the total 2010 budget, records show.
Secretary of State Melanie Knight said the 412 vacant positions represent the number of open jobs at the tribe when the budget was developed in May and may not actually reflect the number of open jobs when the budget goes into effect.
“There will always be vacancies at any given time. Resignations, hires and terminations happen daily, so they are revolving and not static,” she said. “Our turnover rate at the Nation was 12 percent in 2008. When compared to our total workforce, that represents 388 employees, which is very close to this vacancy number of 412 as of May 2009.”
Knight said the CN fills open positions using a Cherokee-preference hiring system and by recruiting prospective employees via advertisements, job fairs, trade journals and its internal training and education programs.
As of late September, she said the CN workforce was more than 80 percent Cherokee and more than 90 percent Native American. “So it is reasonable to assume that Cherokee citizens will comprise the majority of new hires,” Knight said.
According to budget records, the largest number of job vacancies was in Health Services with 165. Melissa Gower, Health Services group leader, said those vacancies included 38 administrative and support staff, 24 provider, 46 nursing and 57 clinical jobs.
She said in the FY 2010 budget, Health Services has 1,697 budgeted positions. About 390 of those are Memorandums of Agreement and Inter-personnel Agreements with Indian Health Service employees from when the tribe assumed operation of W.W. Hasting Indian Hospital in 2008, Gower said.
The tribe is able to maintain federal MOAs for commissioned officers and IPAs for civil service employees, allowing employees to retain their federal employment and compensation packages with the IHS.
Gower said the other 1,307 health jobs are full-time and temporary tribal hires. Tribal hires at Hastings allowed IHS employees to convert to CN employees and to accept tribal benefit packages, as well as CN employee protections under the tribe’s constitution.
Health Services also has the largest number of new hires budgeted for 2010 with 67. Gower said 19 of those new hires will be administrative and support positions. Another 25 nursing, 18 clinical and five provider jobs are also budgeted.
She said Health Services recruits the same way as CN Human Resources, but that it also has a full-time recruiter to search for qualified workers.
Another CN group with significant unfilled positions is Human Services with 63 vacant jobs. Human Services Group Leader Norman Merriman said most of those jobs were in the Child Support Enforcement programs, which will be added incrementally as the caseload expands during the fiscal year.
“ICW (Indian Child Welfare) always has positions vacant as social workers are hard to find at various times. There are also a few new positions in ICW that will be filled in 2010,” she said.
She added that the John A. Ketcher Youth Shelter frequently has vacancies due to the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week nature of the program and the difficulty of finding shift workers.
Merriman said other difficult jobs to fill are child development jobs in the Child Care and Development program, as well as cooking jobs at the youth shelter and senior nutrition sites.
Overall, the tribe is budgeted for 3,233 employees, according to council records. Records also show that most of that number is a current employee count of 2,707.
Current employees take up most of the money budgeted for salaries and benefits at about $135 million. Vacant jobs are budgeted at $19 million, with new jobs budgeted at $5 million.
According to records, the 2010 staffing budget is about $159 million, up about $9 million from FY 2009 and about $28 million from FY 2008.