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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the sciencing-ain't-easy dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:53PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:53PM (#204312) Journal
    In the UK, there is a special category of work visa for skilled employees. This is relatively easy to get for qualifying jobs, as we quite like skilled people coming over here and paying taxes (well, those of us who don't read The Daily Mail do, anyway). This has a minimum salary requirement as one of the prerequisites: if you're going to import skilled people, it has to be because you have a skills shortage, not just to drive down wages. This applies to all industries, with one exception: There is a special exemption from the minimum wage for postdocs.
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