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The Sacramento Bee reports that the labor contract between California state government and the 2,800 employees represented by California Association of Professional Scientists expired this week, spotlighting yet again the long-running feud over whether the tiny union's members should earn as much as their peers in federal and local governments and private industry. "It's a challenge to keep people motivated," says Rita Hypnarowski. "We talk about retaining the best and the brightest, but I can see that's not going to happen." A recent survey by the Brown administration found that the total compensation for half of state-employed chemists is less than $8,985 per month. That's 33 percent less than the median total compensation for federal chemists, nearly 13 percent less than the midpoint for local-government chemists and almost 6 percent below the private sector.
Members of the union perform a wide variety of tasks, everything from fighting food-borne illnesses to mopping up the Refugio State Beach oil spill. For example Cassandra McQuaid left a job last year at the Department of Public Health's state-of-the-art Richmond laboratories where she tracked foodborne illnesses. It's the kind of vital, behind-the-scenes work that goes unnoticed until an E. coli outbreak makes headlines and local health officials need a crack team of scientists to unravel how it happened. "It really came down to money," says McQuaid. "I just couldn't live in the Bay Area on a state salary."
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:16PM
Yes, actually, that is an outrage: We want the government scientists to be good at what they do (otherwise, they'll waste time and resources the same way sub-par people in any endeavor do). If their salaries are noticeably low in comparison to the private sector, and they seem to be, then the smart ones are going to leave, giving the government the sub-par people only.
If your argument is rooted in "We'd be better off if the government didn't have scientists on their payroll", then enjoy grilling your E Coli-laced burger on that nice oil-drenched beach right off of the arid wasteland that used to be a nice park.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @05:09PM
As I read it, Anon's argument is that government scientists get many benefits that private sector scientists don't get, thus more than making up for a 6% pay differential.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:43PM