$800 bonus offered to OUC employees to show up for work

Washington, DC (7News) — Heather McGaffin, director of the DC Office of Unified Communication (OUC), sent an email to her employees Tuesday morning offering them an $800 bonus just for showing up to work.

This shows how desperate the agency is to get its employees to work.

For weeks, 7News has questioned Director McGaffin about the community's concerns about conditions at OUC. She has refused to answer or acknowledge our questions.

As 7News previously reported, a five-month-old baby suffered cardiac arrest and died during a system malfunction.

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This week, 7News learned just how serious the situation is. 7News confirmed that McGaffin sent a letter to her employees on Tuesday morning telling them they would get $800 more per month if they showed up for all shifts.

7News spoke with Councilwoman Brooke Pinto's office. She pushed for increased hiring and retention incentives for employees in this year's budget.

7News has tracked the salaries of the 351 people currently listed as employees at OUC, including 91 dispatchers.

READ MORE | DC's 911 dispatch system experiences another outage; OUC checks

A dispatcher who started last month makes $35,000. A dispatcher who started nearly 30 years ago has a salary of nearly $97,000, and another who has been working for nearly 10 years makes nearly $90,000.

There are 92 people listed who are responsible for receiving and forwarding your emergency calls. Their starting salary is $50,000, and for a manager it's just over $100,000.

A source told 7News that OUC employees also received an $800 bonus in June. That month, 31 shifts were not fully covered and in July, 58 shifts were not fully covered.