[JayCT]

Originally Posted by JViello

Yea 35 hour work weeks, just about every holiday off, lucrative pension programs, above average pay, 4+ weeks vacation, medical coverage for you and your family till death, no worry of layoffs and just about impossible to be fired.

Some state workers are now on 40 hours per weekand have been for 15 years now. I would not say that their pay is above average but it is certainly not significantly below. Their benefits are very good but they do not include medical coverage for your entire family for life. It never did. If you were a Tear 1 employee, medical coverage for you and your spouse was for life. They stopped this 25+ years ago. I do not think there are any Tier 1's even employeed anymore. Now state employees pay for their spouse and families. Jay

[hartford_renter]

Originally Posted by JayCT

I wasn't going to post about this but... This is just one guy. While I am sure there are others who abuse the system, they really are few and far between. Most state workers do their jobs and are not this way. To me though this shows one of the problems with state government. To save money they do not train their personnel properly. If the managers knew about this and knew how to document it, they could have fired the guy without incident. Jay

Good point. The problem with this mess really can't be blamed on the employees who are on average no different from any other.

Blame the state and the residents who have voted a democratic majority state legislature and governor. Unfortunately now it is IMPOSSIBLE to cut spending in any meaningful way.

We have the highest pension/health liability per capita of any state of approximately 60 Billion dollars. We have raised taxes and increased spending over 7% per year for the past decade and sadly the people of this supposedly educated state cannot seem to grasp the concept of LOWER SPENDING.

[bobtn]

Jay, Other posters submitted links with the Health Care plans for state eemployees. ALL state employee pay far less than private sector norms incluing lower Tiers, all pay less than 401k norms towards pensions, and all btw, have far lower medical out of pocket costs than private sector norms, while salaries have been moved to private sector norms. Add it up, and each taxpayer is subisdizng a total employee cost far, far, far above private sector equivalent.

[JayCT]

Bob - I know what state employees are getting and paying for their benefits and you are right they are good. But the benefits JViello was talking about (free medical for employee and spouse for life) are long gone. He also made it sound like they are paid more than private companies which they are not. Still they do have a good deal. A few I know were shocked when I told them how much I paid for my medical and it is not nearly as good. Jay

[bobtn]

The problem is as the state moved to private sector rates for pay, they kept benefits far above private sector. That should not have been allowed, 25 years ago, pay was below private sector, so that tradeoff was fair. If they wanted private sector pay, benefits should have been reduced far, far, more, as in 401k Malloy wanted instead of pensions,and 72% Health Premium employer paid (28% employee on family plan >$500/month!) with a few k/person out of pocket max.They used their voting power to get essentially a "sweetheart" deal, again and again, including this deal.

PS, with their bene package, JViello is correct. Their total value received from employer far exceeds private sector equivalent. One should not look at Gross Pay alone.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by bobtn

PS, with their bene package, JViello is correct. Their total value received from employer far exceeds private sector equivalent. One should not look at Gross Pay alone.

Overall this is true but he was making it sound like they were not only getting better benefits, they were getting better pay on top of that. And that is not true. Jay

[bobtn]

I agree 100%, but pay parity should not have happened w/o benefit parity, which the state emps would have whined about endlessly had that come to pass.

[JViello]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Overall this is true but he was making it sound like they were not only getting better benefits, they were getting better pay on top of that. And that is not true. Jay

Jay, that's just not true. I have no idea where you getting private sector jobs are on parity to the public sector. Simply skimming CTSunlight.org | Home shows this on a local level (Show me where in the private sector grounds maintenance people make 65K per year not including benefits.) but the BLS says the same thing.

Employer costs for employee compensation, September 2009, The Editor's Desk

The average hourly wage of public employees last year—$39.66—was 45 percent more than the average hourly wage of $27.42 paid in the private sector...

...Federal employees earned on average, between pay and benefits, $123,049 in 2009, while private workers made $61,051.[16] According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal employees earned $30,415 more than private sector jobs in 2000, but it has increased to $61,998 in 2009:[16] Federal pay has increased 33 percent faster than inflation since 2000.

[basehead617]

Originally Posted by JViello

Jay, that's just not true. I have no idea where you getting private sector jobs are on parity to the public sector. Simply skimming CTSunlight.org | Home shows this on a local level (Show me where in the private sector grounds maintenance people make 65K per year not including benefits.) but the BLS says the same thing.

Employer costs for employee compensation, September 2009, The Editor's Desk

The average hourly wage of public employees last year—$39.66—was 45 percent more than the average hourly wage of $27.42 paid in the private sector...

...Federal employees earned on average, between pay and benefits, $123,049 in 2009, while private workers made $61,051.[16] According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal employees earned $30,415 more than private sector jobs in 2000, but it has increased to $61,998 in 2009:[16] Federal pay has increased 33 percent faster than inflation since 2000.

I feel like this has been gone over so many times, but anyway those numbers on the bls.gov site do not account for the fact that there is a much higher percentage of highly educated/experienced people (and the roles requiring them) in the federal workforce than the private sector.

However, with that said, if you break it down by job position and field and experience (e.g. all other things being equal), I have seen numbers that do show that those in the public sector do sometimes make more than the private sector.. The numbers I recall seeing show about 60/40 as far as the % of similar roles where public sector was ahead vs private sector being ahead. I won't dispute them, though it should be noted that there are significant segments of the public sector that do make far less (like medicine and law).

I think one thing it does go to show is that a primary driver of lower wages and declining benefits (not to mention the constant specter of mass layoffs) is stockholder demand for more and more profit growth every year no matter what the cost. Back in the days when REAL wealth was being built in this country, I think it was the patriarch of the early Rockefeller family that said regarding the early stock market that you should never trust a company that grows profits too quickly. I think they had it right.. investment should be for the long term and companies should look to the long-term implications of their decisions. With the way the market reacts today, that idea is quaint and laughable.. it's too bad.

I don't think corporate profits are bad, but I think for people to really be amenable to the idea that they are the be-all end-all, more people need to be investors.. why does someone care about corporate profits if they don't benefit from it? (don't give them the idea that the profits help the coffers of the US govt, because they rarely do.. profits are easy to hide for tax purposes as we all know). People aware of their 401k portfolios is a good start, but I think the mindset of a huge chunk of society needs to change before they will see corporations as anything other than massive man-eating machines.

Also, the public sector provides the benefits and security that USED to be widely available in the private sector.. I don't think the loss of either of those things in the private sector is a 'good' thing for society, regardless of the fact that it's true that the public sector has a cushier employment situation.

[hartford_renter]

Originally Posted by basehead617

I feel like this has been gone over so many times, but anyway those numbers on the bls.gov site do not account for the fact that there is a much higher percentage of highly educated/experienced people (and the roles requiring them) in the federal workforce than the private sector.

However, with that said, if you break it down by job position and field and experience (e.g. all other things being equal), I have seen numbers that do show that those in the public sector do sometimes make more than the private sector.. The numbers I recall seeing show about 60/40 as far as the % of similar roles where public sector was ahead vs private sector being ahead. I won't dispute them, though it should be noted that there are significant segments of the public sector that do make far less (like medicine and law).

I think one thing it does go to show is that a primary driver of lower wages and declining benefits (not to mention the constant specter of mass layoffs) is stockholder demand for more and more profit growth every year no matter what the cost. Back in the days when REAL wealth was being built in this country, I think it was the patriarch of the early Rockefeller family that said regarding the early stock market that you should never trust a company that grows profits too quickly. I think they had it right.. investment should be for the long term and companies should look to the long-term implications of their decisions. With the way the market reacts today, that idea is quaint and laughable.. it's too bad.

I don't think corporate profits are bad, but I think for people to really be amenable to the idea that they are the be-all end-all, more people need to be investors.. why does someone care about corporate profits if they don't benefit from it? (don't give them the idea that the profits help the coffers of the US govt, because they rarely do.. profits are easy to hide for tax purposes as we all know). People aware of their 401k portfolios is a good start, but I think the mindset of a huge chunk of society needs to change before they will see corporations as anything other than massive man-eating machines.

Also, the public sector provides the benefits and security that USED to be widely available in the private sector.. I don't think the loss of either of those things in the private sector is a 'good' thing for society, regardless of the fact that it's true that the public sector has a cushier employment situation.

I don't think the issue is about arguing over state worker pay to determine if it is fair or not. The simple truth is that we can't afford the level of spending the state has racked up. Spending has increased 7% per year. How about increase it 3% per year.

Go to your town website and look at the spending trend. You will most likely see the same thing, spending increasing at about 5-7% per year.

You are better off voting for a spending freeze in your town or limiting the increase to 2-3% which is in line with inflation.