The Cities Blog

Rybak’s staffers really like their jobs

R.T. Rybak must be a pretty good boss. The Minneapolis mayor's office received the highest marks of any department on the city's 2011 Employee Engagement Survey, whose results were released today.

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The mayor is responsible for only 11 employees (although the overachievers in his office somehow managed 12 survey responses), but all of them say they're "extremely satisfied" with their jobs.

In fact, there was only one area on the 68-question survey where a majority of Rybak's staff gave the gig a thumbs-down: the paycheck. Almost two-thirds of them say they're underpaid. Welcome to the club.

Now for the bad news

The most dissatisfied workers in city government are the firefighters. Only three percent of them think they have enough bodies in the department to get their jobs done. A whopping six percent think city leaders care about their abysmal morale.

Since 2001, Minneapolis has cut 71 firefighters from the department -- about 15 percent of the force. The city installed a new fire chief this year. Clearly, John Fruetel has his work cut out for him.