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Are state workers paid too much?
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A guest editorial published recently asserts that Governor Branstad’s views on state employee pay are misguided.
“Gov. Terry Branstad has complained about state worker compensation for decades,” says an editorial from The Des Moines Register. “In the early 1990s, his conflicts with public employee unions led to a lawsuit that reached the Iowa Supreme Court. During his most recent campaign, he called a pay raise for state workers “reckless and irresponsible.” This year, he used an executive order to bypass collective bargaining processes and give employees the option of paying 20 percent toward the cost of their health insurance premiums. The action resulted in formal complaints that have yet to be resolved.
“It is clear the governor thinks state workers have it too good,” the editorial continues. “So you can forgive some people if they saw no mere coincidence last week when the Iowa Department of Administrative Services released a report on state employees’ pay and benefits just a few weeks before contract negotiations begin with employees’ unions — especially when the report suggests that state workers are paid too much.
“Commissioned by the Branstad administration and conducted by AON Hewitt, the study concludes the base pay for 18,500 state workers averages 17.9 percent higher than pay for comparable workers elsewhere in the ‘market.’ … A study by Iowa Policy Project found that government workers are paid less than private-sector workers having similar educations. The Congressional Budget Office came to the same conclusion when it looked at federal employees.
“Public workers should be well-compensated. The Branstad administration itself has argued that teachers should earn more. State workers do the important jobs of protecting abused children, patrolling our highways and inspecting nursing homes. They manage complicated programs, oversee the spending of tax money and ensure that Iowa complies with numerous federal regulations.
“There are legitimate aspects of state employees’ pay and benefits that deserve serious discussion — such as the automatic annual pay increases and health insurance at no cost to workers,” the editorial concludes. “But one study suggesting state workers are paid too much deserves limited attention — especially when it comes from an administration with strong feelings about employee compensation.”
What do you think about state employee compensation, particularly as it compares to workers in similar positions in the private sector?
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They make wages comparable to the private sector. They have expensive healthcare plans they really don’t pay very much for. They get a million if not multi-million $$$$$ retirement handed to them. But the icing on the cake is they don’t ever really have any layoffs and their employer doesn’t create a product that generates revenue or profit. It’s all on the taxpayers backs.
If you don’t think they make too much money, then why don’t you kick in extra $$$$.
If public sector employees in Iowa are paid too much in relation to private sector employees, then perhaps those in the private sector are paid too little.
If public sector employees have heath insurance and pensions and private sector employees don’t, then that’s a wrong that needs to be made right, but not by taking away health insurance and pensions so that nobody has these.
I once looked up the numbers with regard to Iowa’s ranking in terms of household income and Iowa came up in the bottom quarter.
That’s terrible. There’s no way around it. That’s terrible
” Iowa came up in the bottom quarter.”
Wrong. As much as I don’t enjoy using Wikipedia for this it was the easiest/quickest. We’re pretty much smack dab in the middle. So, Roberta were you given this talking point or did you just grab it outta thin air?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income
What i said, Mr Abernathy, was that I once looked up those numbers. It was a while ago. it wasn’t a talking point or “outta thin air”. It was back when people actually had to go to the library and do a paper search.
Back then, about 15 or so years ago, Iowa was in the bottom quarter. Now Iowa is in the bottom half.
Is that because Iowa median houshold income has gone up? Or because median household income in other states has gone down?
I’ll leave that for you to answer
“base pay for 18,500 state workers averages 17.9 percent higher than pay for comparable workers elsewhere in the ‘market”
Does that base include athletic coaches employed by the state? Or current employees recieving state pensions form past employment? How much of that pay is collected by adminstration vs.people who actually do the work of policing, maintaining the highways, and all the other day to day work that we want done? If they are serious about saving money the cuts need to start at the top, if our elected officials are supposed to represent us then none of them should recieve more pay then the median income for the state.
Ellison,
I don’t know what the study was comparing to what. The article didn’t say. But it is kind of suspicious when a study commissioned by the Branstad administration says one thing and studies done by the Iowa Policy project and the Congressional Budget Office say the opposite
One of the difficulties in making comparisons is that for some public sector jobs, there are no comparable jobs in the private sector. For example, we can’t really compare police officers to security guards but what would be the alternative?
Ellison,
It hit me that there is an explanation for the contradictory results.
Branstad’s commissioned study compared job to job—”comparable workers elsewhere in the ‘market”. The Iowa Policy Project and the Congressional Budget Office compared worker qualifications—”similar educations”
A lot of public sector jobs simply do have private sector equivalents. Or if they do, the equivalents are paid a lot less. So you end up comparing police officers to security guards, professional firefighters to nobody, public sector social workers to private non-profit para-professionals, public school teachers to private school teachers, librarians to I’m not sure what.
If you check merit staff pay scales to the equivalent private sector jobs, those people are paid better and have health care and pension benefits not usually available in the private sector. But merit staff entry level tops out at around $35,000 or so, maybe a little higher. Some of those jobs the private sector pays better, but for many, it’s simply no contest. If you work food service, for example, you’re simply not going to find a private sector job that pays even the same as the equivalent merit job with benefits. Ditto with the lower level clerical jobs, custodial, CNA.
What Branstad is doing is trying to score political points by pitting the lowest paid Iowans against their public sector equivalents in a race to the bottom. That’s not only despicable, it’s a plan for turning Iowa into Mississippi. Do we really want that?