One More Data Point, Please: RI State Workers 5th Highest Paid

An article by Kathy Gregg in Thursday’s Providence Journal contained this revealing sentence:

After months of study, Segal concluded: “The career earnings potential for Rhode Island state employees is lower than that offered by other employers for comparable work.”

Correct me if I’m wrong but it sounds to me like one of the more subtle goals of this study is to find a way to increase RI state workers’ pay. Before we do that, wouldn’t it be smart to compare what our state workers make to the compensation of other state workers?

In fact, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Rhode Island state workers are the fifth highest paid in the country. (Page 15 of this PDF.)

Additionally, that excerpt from the study’s conclusion refers to “comparable work”. Is that an invitation to compare public sector pay to private? Let’s take it as one, shall we? As of 2011, the public – private pay gap in Rhode Island was the sixth highest in the country.

In her article, Gregg alertly points out that this study has come at the moment that Governor Chafee is negotiating a new contract with state employees.

And they have cropped up again at a time when the Chafee administration is negotiating new contracts with unions representing state workers who, in most cases, have not had an across-the-board raise since June 19, 2011.

Asked the status of those contract negotiations on Wednesday, Governor Chafee’s spokeswoman Christine Hunsinger said: “Nothing settled. Negotiations ongoing.”

Rhode Island taxpayers are on the short end of all of this: they pick up the cost of the country’s fifth highest paid state workers while trying to deal with the fiscal handicap of the sixth largest public – private pay gap.

Accordingly, we sure hope that the Chafee administration is keeping both of these data points foremost in mind as negotiations proceed and will, in fact, move towards mitigating rather than exacerbating the taxpayers’ considerably disadvantageous situation.

[Monique is editor of the RI Taxpayer Times newsletter and spokesperson for R.I. Taxpayers. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the organization.]

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