Nonunionized employees frustrated by four years of no raises
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
HARRISBURG — The state’s largest public employee union has a new four-year contract guaranteeing pay increases in three of the next four years, but nonunion workers are feeling the squeeze after four years without an increase.
Unlike other first-term Republican governors, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett did not take a hard-line stance with the public sector unions, agreeing to a new contract quickly and quietly, while most of the state’s attention was focused on the budget process at the end of June.
The old contract expired June 30, and last week union members voted for the new contract by a margin of 4-to-1, said David Fillman, president of Council 13 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, which represents about 45,000 unionized state workers. The other, smaller state employee unions use the AFSCME contract as a guide; no issues are expected with the remaining contracts.
The contract includes a 4 percent base pay increase during the next four years and 6.75 percent increases based on the experience and seniority for workers who have been in the union between one and 20 years. Depending on seniority and position, unionized workers could earn a 10.75 percent pay raise during the course of the next four years in a series of smaller annual increases.
“It’s a fair contract as far as our members are concerned,” Fillman said.
Secretary of Administration Kelly Logan, who leads the department responsible for state government personnel, commended the public-sector unions for being “true partners at the negotiation table.”
The contract increases health-care contributions for union workers from 3 percent to 5 percent in the fourth and final year of the contract. Even with those contributions, the average unionized state worker will have to pay about $150 per month for a comprehensive family health plan, though the exact amount will depend on the worker's salary. In the private sector, the average is $333 per month, according to the Kaiser Family Institute, a nonprofit health-care research center.
Union crackdown not in PA
Corbett indicated during his budget address that his administration would seek concessions from public sector unions, when the contracts were renegotiated, leaving workers wondering if Pennsylvania would resemble Wisconsin or New Jersey, where first-term Republican governors recently cracked down on benefits, pay and collective bargaining of public sector unions.
“I think a lot of people were concerned about losing the pay increases that we had already earned,” said an AFSCME member who works in the Treasury Department who also asked to have her name withheld because of job security concerns. “But that didn’t happen. This is a good deal.”
In June, the Democratic-controlled New Jersey Legislature agreed to Gov. Chris Christie's widespread cutbacks for union workers, including rolling back benefits, increasing retirement ages and limiting collective bargaining. Wisconsin's Republican-led Legislature passed legislation this year, requiring union workers to pay more toward their pension and health-care benefits and limiting their collective bargaining to matters of pay tied to inflation.
But in Pennsylvania, no such controversial moves emerged, despite full Republican control of state government.
In the final contract, Corbett’s call for pay cuts and the ability to furlough union employees are nowhere to be seen. The governor's office did not return calls for comment on their negotiations, but Corbett said last month the agreement would be “fair to the workers, fair to Pennsylvanians” and fit within the overall goal of controlling spending.
Battle over the bulge
Fillman said the strong-arm tactics used by new Republican governors in New Jersey and Wisconsin — and elsewhere in recent years — had little to do with the state budget or wages for public employees.
“It had more to do with chopping the legs out from under the public employees,” Fillman said. “When we sat down with the Corbett administration, that was clearly not their goal.”
Christopher Borick, a pollster and professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said Corbett likely agreed to the union's request for a pay increase to avoid a costly political battle that would drain his capital and take attention from other agenda items, as happened in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
“Therefore, picking a major fight with the unions right now was something that he strategically saw as taking too much oxygen out of his early administration,” Borick said.
Matthew Brouillette, president and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based free market think tank, said state workers have seen a 45 percent increase in wages and benefits during the past 10 years, more than double the rate of inflation and above the private sector increase of 34 percent.
"The fact that wages were frozen doesn't even begin to bring government sector pay into parity with the private sector that is paying the public sector's wages," Brouillette said.
'Between a rock and a hard place'
The new AFSCME contract also left some of the 13,000 nonunionized state employees — many of whom have not seen a pay increase in four years — scratching their heads.
One nonunionized state worker, a 55-year-old clerk who has worked in the state government for nine years but asked us to withhold his name for fear of losing his job, said there was widespread frustration among the nonunion workers in the Capitol.
“It’s frustrating when you come in every day for four years and you’re not even getting a cost-of-living increase,” he said. “You’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
He said his position does not give him the option of joining a union, but he would “jump at the chance” if it did, simply for the better pay. But at his age, it would be too risky to leave his current job with unemployment remaining high — 7.4 percent last month in Pennsylvania.
Nonunionized state workers have not seen a pay increase in four years. During the same time, union workers have watched their pay climb 14 percent. Although the new agreement includes a one-year pay freeze for unionized workers, their pay will begin increasing again next year.
Under the existing contract, the average AFSCME member makes $39,000 and receives another $23,000 in benefits annually, according to the state Department of Administration. The average nonunion state employee, mostly at the management level, receives $60,000 in salary and about $26,000 in benefits annually.
The administration said it reached a similar deal with Local 668 of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, which represents about 10,000 state employees. The SEIU and AFSCME contracts cover the vast majority of unionized state employees.
Public sector unions contributed $130,000 to Corbett’s gubernatorial campaign, which accounted for less than 1 percent of his overall contributions, according to Pennsylvania campaign finance reports tracked by the National Institute for Money in State Politics, a national nonprofit that follows state campaign finances.
Comparison of 2007 AFSCME contract (Rendell Administration) and 2011 AFSCME contract (Corbett Administration).
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Source: Pennsylvania Department of Administration.
