C.3(c). Protections and Compensation for Civic Duty

No employer may terminate or otherwise retaliate against a Citizen for taking time off to Fulfill a Civic Duty. Whenever possible, it is advisable for a Citizen to give notice of such a duty to an employer in advance. Still, merely failing to provide notice cannot, on its own, constitute grounds for termination or other adverse action against the Citizen.

Civic duties are vital to our free system of government. Only the most naïve idealist, though, would pretend there aren’t employers who will punish or even fire employees who attend to these duties. We know it happens. This provision not only offers protection, it also closes an obvious workaround. “You didn’t give me notice,” or “You didn’t give your notice to the right person,” or “You didn’t give me enough notice,” are all very foreseable ways for an employer to try to claim the retaliation is really for not giving notice, when everyone knows it is really for daring to be absent, at all. The language here concedes that notice should be given, but failing to do so isn’t enough to warrant punishment.

A Citizen who is required to perform Civic Duty shall be paid no less than one-third the salary of a Representative. This amount shall be prorated based on the number of days, full or partial, during which the Citizen is required to report and fulfill their Civic Duty obligations. The time during which a Citizen is empaneled but released pending future dates or actions shall not be counted as active service. No statute may be written or enforced to withhold, reduce, or deny this just compensation.

Under our current system, the compensation for service is insulting and laughable. It creates real financial hardship for some people. In my home county – Harris County, Texas – when I google jury pay, I get a result of $30 for the first day and $58 dollars per day for subsequent days. That’s $3.75/hr for the first day (if you assume an 8-hour day), and $7.25 for each subsequent day. Meanwhile, if you don’t arrive early enough for free juror’s parking (there’s never enough), you have to pay anywhere between $10 - $40 for parking. The math doesn’t math.

Under this Charter, while service certainly won’t make you rich, you would earn one-third of the equivalent daily rate of a member of the House of Representatives. That is mandated at the 90^th percentile of individual income at the time of the last census. So at the time of this writing, that figure is $140,000. One-third of that is $46,667 per year. The average number of working days in a year is 260. So, by that measure, a person serving to fulfill a civic duty would get paid $179.49 per day for their service. That’s hardly enough to retire on, but it does compensate their service more fairly.

It's important to note that this compensation is a floor (“shall be paid no less than…”). Nothing prevents a local jurisdiction from supplementing that amount, if it chooses to do so.

A final protection is baked in. Statutory law can’t repeal or otherwise burden this pay. It belongs to the citizen as compensation for their service. It’s our money anyway. We paid the taxes.