"Help wanted."

That sign is posted in front of golf course maintenance facilities from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore. Many superintendents need quality course workers like George W. Bush needs a spike in the approval polls. Badly.

But there's a problem — a big as a waste bunker-sized problem. Many laborers don't want to work on golf course maintenance crews for what they consider piddly pay.

You can't fault them. If you had a choice between working at the supermarket for $9 an hour (no weekends) or working on a golf course maintenance crew for $8 an hour (on weekends), which would you pick?

The happy crew from Walloon Lake Country Club: (front row from left) Spencer Henley, Ben Hayes, Jay Wheatley, Jamie Dunson, Hannah Bissonette and Carl Reiter; (back row from left) Charles Brannon, Matt Rankin, Brandon Belton, Mark Gardener, superintendent Dan Bissonette and Bill White.

And even if someone takes a job on a golf course maintenance crew, he or she might be waiting for something better to come along. So a high turnover rate is another problem.

"This is a really tough issue," says Lyne Tumlinson, director of career services for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA).

It's a really tough issue because there is so much below the problem's surface. For starters, maintenance budgets at many public and private golf courses have been reduced to the point that they can't be reduced anymore, Tumlinson points out. So courses must find the money somewhere if they decide to pay employees more.

The labor problem also feeds on itself. Because employees come and go, superintendents must retrain workers, which costs time and money. It also equates to more inexperienced employees, which could have a negative impact on course conditioning.

And who takes the heat if the course appears as ragged as an aging rock star? The superintendent. And, yes, superintendents are known to lose their jobs over this matter.

While some superintendents have solved their labor woes by hiring immigrant labor through the U.S. government's H-2B visa program, others struggle to attract and retain reliable workers. Golfdom conducted a recent survey that asked superintendents: What are your main management and job challenges? Many listed labor problems as their answer. And several respondents qualified their answers with lack of good pay for course workers as being at the root of their labor problems.

"We tend to have a lot of staff turnover," Phil Fitzgerald, superintendent of Steele Canyon Golf Club in Jamul, Calif., responded in the survey. "I have not had a full crew for more than six months in the last 10 years. This is a direct result of very low wages for staff other than the superintendent and assistant superintendent."

Brady Shave, golf course manager at Speargrass Golf Course, says decent pay is not the only thing that will keep good employees around.

There's an obvious question linked to this dilemma: Is it time to increase the pay for golf course maintenance workers to attract more potential employees and to reduce turnover?

It doesn't take Charles Schwab to conclude that increasing employees' pay can improve the situation, perhaps dramatically. Boosting course workers' wages can provide them with more satisfaction and motivation, among other things. Superintendents can then benefit by having harder-working and more reliable workers, which translates into less turnover on their crews.

Many superintendents agree that money will solve many of their workplace woes. But they also say that money alone may not satisfy employees. They stress that it's also vital to empower employees and let them know they are valued.