Legislative leaders recently announced state employee raises as part of an initial budget agreement, but how much workers will receive will vary greatly depending on what they do for state government.
The State Employees Association of North Carolina, better known as SEANC, says the 3% raise for most state employees is "not going to cut it" amid inflation and higher healthcare premiums.
And while some workers like correctional officers, state law enforcement officers and teachers would get more, other hard-to-fill positions appear to be left out.
WUNC News' Colin Campbell spoke with SEANC executive director Ardis Watkins about the reaction across state agencies to the pay proposal, for this week's WUNC Politics Podcast.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What have you been hearing so far from state employees since this was announced?
“So it's mixed: for the folks who were cherry-picked to get nice increases to try to make up for how far behind market rate they're paid, they're pleased. Correctional officers are pleased, but everyone else within the walls of a prison, who's also in a dangerous situation, is upset.
“There's a lot of people left behind, even with the good things, but the vast majority of state employees are absolutely left more than behind at 3%.”
What, in your mind, is a more appropriate number for the across-the-board increase, given the inflation that we've seen, given the increase in State Health Plan premiums?
“I would say the minimum you would need to have been looking at would have been 5%, and then maybe people would have been OK with that. The way they keep telling me they look at it – and I can't blame them – is ‘gosh, that feels like 1.5% for last year, which they owe me a year of, and then 1.5% for this year, yet they jacked my healthcare up. So what are they doing for me?’”
With the staffing shortage, are you hearing from people who are at the supervisor level around state government that they're having to make choices like, ‘I really don't want to hire this person, but this is the applicant pool that I'm getting for this job’?
“Especially within the prison scenario, I'm hearing a lot from members who say ‘I am increasingly feeling like the folks around me might not have my back if something went down. This is not the same caliber of person that I was used to working with.’ Because of things they have had to change just to keep the prisons open.”
One of the big question marks as this budget comes together is exactly how lawmakers are going to pay for the raises. Is it the wrong approach to eliminate vacant positions to try to raise the pay for the positions that remain across state agencies?
“Since 2009, the number of state employees who are on the job has decreased in North Carolina, because we have jobs frozen right now – so we literally have less people on the job than we did in 2009. We have added 2 million citizens since 2009. Things like DMV (wait times) happen when you do exactly that, you don't increase the number of employees you have. How you would cut any more is mind-blowing to me.”
How does the size of state government staffing levels here in North Carolina compare with the state's overall population growth, and what we're seeing in other states?
“If you look at other states around the Southeast, Georgia and Virginia come to mind, they not only have increased their number of employees as their population increased, but something else interesting happened: their gross state product increased at a higher rate than ours. This does not seem to be a good economic policy.”
