The Mistreatment of State Workers

Looking for a new career? How about a position with a company that hires people full time but lays them off for two weeks a year so it doesn't have to provide benefits? A place where raises have averaged less than two percent a year for the last five years, while premiums for family health insurance have skyrocketed, meaning many workers actually get less take home pay every year?....

The employer is the State of North Carolina and this General Assembly session, lawmakers gave state workers a 2 percent raise or $850, whichever is greater. Last year it was a 2.5 percent raise or $1,000. Workers got $550 in 2003, no increase at all in 2002 and $625 a year in 2001. Insurance premiums have risen as much as 30 percent a year for family coverage.

More than three thousand state workers are considered full-time temporaries who work 40 hours a week but are laid off at the end of the year, then rehired two weeks later as a way to save the state money on insurance, retirement and vacation benefits. A class-action lawsuit has been filed to stop the practice. …

State employees are treated as if they are part of an outside interest group, trying to gain preferential treatment.  They are state government, the men and women who provide every state service, the undercover drug agents at the SBI, the nurses who take care of the mentally ill at state hospitals, the men and women who clean the bathrooms at the legislative buildings.

They are a special group all right, to continue working hard for an employer that takes them for granted all year and virtually ignores them at budget time. That can't continue much longer. We can't have an efficient, high-quality state government to provide the services we all count on unless the political leaders start treating the employees who provide those services with respect in their rhetoric and with appreciation in their budget decisions.

Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch