ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Thousands of state employees may soon get a raise.
State Senators Thursday approved a new contract that includes a 2 percent pay hike. The House, which is also controlled by Democrats, is expected to vote on the contract sometime next week.
The new contract covers seven different working groups, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 5 and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees. It will expire June 30.
Republicans tried but failed to add provisions that would require employees to chip in for their health care premiums. The Senate eventually ratified the contract on a 40-25 vote, largely on party lines.
Negotiations for the next deal just started. Gov. Mark Dayton says he will push to include same-sex domestic partnership benefits in that contract.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
Comments (17)
Add commentIn a related article, they also deny that they've done anything
to actually justify said raise!
what more could you expect?
Sounds about right, it is always something that benefits the senate, that they can actually agree on, or more taxes for the poor/midclasss that benefits only them, Way to go you worthless public servants, you are really earning your money!!!!
How many AFSME reelection
How many AFSME reelection votes will this lock in? Will marx Dayton pay for this himself?
Isn't this nice?
I got $100 to bet I know how Joe Radinovich votes when the House does.
He probably negotiated the raise on a day off from the house.
On second thought,
Joe will probably vote against it because it isn't enough!
It's tough to be a union BA and represent taxpayers.
They deserve it
No, state and county employees don't earn their pay. Remember that when you drive on the plowed roads after it snows this weekend.
Penelope
I never did like horses. LOL
Between pay freezes and employee cut backs
Between pay freezes and employee cut backs, many state employees really need this.
The state workers today are doing way more work than the state workers 20 years ago. Many less employees for an ever increasing workload.
Penelope:
"Way to go you worthless public servants, you are really earning your money!!!!"
I don't even know how to address this comment. It is such a stupid comment it tells me that the person that said it wouldn't understand the rebuttal.
natorade
in the real world (private co.) we have had but 1 or 2 raises since B.O.H. Was elected the !st. time. And because of Obama care we have our health care cost climb over 40 % and Obama care doesn't kick in till 2014 HOW MUCH THEN!!! How much has government workers gone up?? Also the private have been doing A lot more work with fewer people a lot longer. Go to the court house watch the employees sit around and B.S. then charge us for wanting to know what the taxes on our land would be.
DUH
I don't think you understand
How many jobs are actually "State Jobs". There are a lot more than you think.
And I've been to the courthouse. I never see anyone busy B.S.-ing. Matter of fact, I'm usually there waiting for a while because the few people that are on staff are busy with other people or busy doing other parts of their job. Its funny, the courthouse I go to I think there are 4 or 5 help windows, I don't think there are that many people available to help citizens at a time.
It's comments like Penelope's that anger me: "Way to go you worthless public servants"
How worthless are they when you need said tax information. Or when Veterans need employment and turn to the Veteran's Employment Services. Or when someone burns your house down, I'm sure you would consider Fire Marshal worthless during the investigation.
And Pickle, I know I'm using someone else's comments against you, but only trying to make a point.
Just because someone in the private sector didn't get a raise this year, doesn't mean the state workers who haven't gotten one in a very long time shouldn't get one.
Side note: There are a lot of private companies in MN that are doing just fine right now. Employees getting big bonuses at Christmas time and raises once a year to keep up with inflation. As far as I know, that's not the case with any of the state workers.
In addition
If you don't know how many State Agencies MN has, visit here:
http://mn.gov/portal/government/state/agencies-boards-commissions/
Keep this in mind:
"Thousands of state employees may soon get a raise."
That doesn't include every state employee, nor does it include every state agency. And if you knew how much most of the lower end state workers make, 2% isn't very much at all. Hardly enough to keep up with inflation over the past decade.
natorade
You my good person must live in the big city. Work for the union ,government, or retired because you don't know what it is like today. 60- 70% tax (income,7 3/4 sales tax, property tax, gas tax, smokes, phone tax, school tax, ECT.). Not to forget the biggest one health care.More than double in the last 4 years.
natorade
You are making the point that some of us have been trying to make . That is there are more public employees ( and that includes federal, state, county, city ) and less private sector workers to pay for them. If you give public sector workers a raise naturally it comes from the taxes of the private sector workers. Yes, I know public sector employees pay their taxes but, what does that cover?
Look up how many private sector workers to takes to cover one public sector worker. It is nothing against public workers but, simple math.
Public sector workers have been paid well with super benefits and retirement benefits and it cannot be sustained.
Nothing personal just the way it is.
I live in a city
I live in a city smaller than Brainerd. It's called Bemidji. Very similar style of communities, the biggest difference however is Brainerd survives on tourism. Bemidji survives on college students. Both of those depend on state employees.
http://www.exploreminnesota.com/index.aspx (believe it or not, Minnesota has a state run tourism agency.)
As for me, I have never worked for the government. Don't get me wrong, I would love a raise but I don't think I'll be getting one anytime soon. Just because I won't be getting a raise doesn't mean no one should get a raise, in my opinion.
Sadie
You make a nice argument.
The number of state jobs increases, while the number of jobs in each department decreases. I'm not necessarily against cutting some of the state agencies but I'm not about to call any of them worthless (again, I know you didn't say that, but that's the line I'm more or less responding to).
I guess before I really get too passionate on this subject, we should all find out which of the state employees would be looking at that tiny 2% raise.
The story said some, not all. But I get so tired of people who use the roads every day, smoke cigarettes, and are hooked up to city utilities and complain about having to pay taxes on that stuff. If we want the services, we gotta pay for them. If you don't wanna pay for the services, move to a location that doesn't provide those services. No one forces anyone to live anywhere.
Pickel if I am not mistaken
If you have had just "one or two raises since B.O.H. was elected", I think you have seen your paycheck rise more than state employees have. I don't think they had much if any increase under TPAW and nothing under last year's legislature--this year's contract approval is for a contract that already expired. State employees are working without a contract right now, I believe.
Not entirely sure of my facts there, perhaps a state employee can set us straight.
The larger issue here is pretty simple, yet another unfounded bashing of a class of people by so called republicans.
I know there are state employees who might like to vote republican--and ironically, if there really are as many of them as the republicans say there are, you'd think they'd want a few of them to vote republican! This type of knee jerk bashing without cause insures the vast majority will vote democrat. Doesn't have to be that way, but it would require a bit of thought and reasoning on the part of republicans, which as we saw last fall, is not their strong suit these days!
More facts
The minimum raise they will get is 2%. Most will get more some over 6%. one of the biggest issues is the fact that they will get 100% of their healthcare paid for. Who gets that?The average Minnesotan pays at least 19% of their health care. The senate asked that they pay 5%, very reasonable. No one is saying that state employees don't work hard but who in the private sector when Brainerd has an unemployment rate of 12.7% and the state 1+ billion dollars in debt is getting that kind of raises and benefits.