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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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @05:38PM
Being handcuffed into a union is stupid. Ditch the union and negotiate your own benefits. If the entity they work for only uses union people, run away and look elsewhere.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Bromine001 on Thursday July 02 2015, @06:50PM
Because historically non-union workers get paid better and get more vacation?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:47PM
Because historically non-union workers get paid better and get more vacation?
That's been true in the US since union workers often ended up unemployed. Keep in mind that any current unions are survivors of a great culling of labor unions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:56PM
Since this union still exists, it must be one of the good ones that did not get culled, just as every union that still exists are the good ones in your reasoning.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:32PM
just as every union that still exists are the good ones in your reasoning
My reasoning has not cast any labor unions as good or bad (though I do have further opinion on this, of course). I merely pointed out the great flaw in the reasoning that labor unions result in better pay and more vacation time. They often do, if your labor union happens to survive.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:53PM
Yeah, that's the only thing that got California tech jobs down to 40 hours/week with accessible vacation time.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:36PM
Public employees cannot negotiate their own salaries and benefits on an individual basis because of civil service rules in place to protect them from political interference. All employees doing the same job are, more or less, paid the same.
There was a case several years ago I heard about where the medical and psychiatric employees of the state prison system and Department of Mental Health, many of whom work within the prison system, sued the state of California to get their pay and benefits raised to roughly the same as those who do the same jobs in the private sector. They won and all of a sudden all of them got about a 33% increase in pay.
After all this happened, there is what my dentist, an old coot with a broad Texas accent who continues to work because he loves being a dentist, told me while I was in the chair. He was considering applying for a job at Folsom State Prison, close to where he lives, to work as a prison dentist because the pay was $300k/year. He was astounded at the amount. However, he didn't want to work pulling teeth all day which, at the time, is all state prison dentists were allowed to do at the time.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:00PM
Public employees cannot negotiate their own salaries and benefits on an individual basis because of civil service rules in place to protect them from political interference.
That's quite the load of bull there since a) it doesn't really do that (it's just not that hard to find or create a good paying position for a crony), and b) is just another thing giving public employee labor unions protected status and in turn enabling their own political interference.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday July 02 2015, @10:28PM
I was referring to civil service rules, not the influence the unions have on what they are paid. But what I said about the government employee compensation is in fact accurate.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 03 2015, @12:47AM
I was referring to civil service rules [...] But what I said about the government employee compensation is in fact accurate.
And you were also referring to the rationalization for those rules, particularly the manufactured need for collective bargaining. That is what I responded to.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday July 03 2015, @06:08AM
I believe I said nothing about a "manufactured need for collective bargaining". However, government employees ought to be paid a salary comparable to that paid in the private sector. This is not only to be fair to the government employees, this is to be fair to the electorate. If you want to have awful government employees, pay them less than the private sector so the government can only get the bottom of the barrel.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:41AM
However, government employees ought to be paid a salary comparable to that paid in the private sector.
What makes you think it's not already true? For example, this labor union represents people who for the most part are lab and field technicians. You don't even need a college degree to do that successfully. And that's not a particularly high paying job in the private sector.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Saturday July 04 2015, @01:25AM
California, for example, is a state that pays its programmers terrible wages. It starts at $4711 a month and ends at $7465 a month. That, my friend, is terrible and is not competitive. Incidentally, they expect you to have some experience to earn all of $4711 a month.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 04 2015, @10:40PM
California, for example, is a state that pays its programmers terrible wages. It starts at $4711 a month and ends at $7465 a month. That, my friend, is terrible and is not competitive.
Depends what they do. If all you're doing is web monkey stuff, it sounds about right for California. We also need to remember that there are typically some very plush benefits packages and perks associated with that sort of offer, particularly pensions and considerable job security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @10:34PM
negotiate your own benefits.
You mean, "kiss your boss's ass"? Good luck with that. You are obviously a person of exceptional qualifications, with many areas of expertise!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:48PM
I believe he's instead the boss. Or perhaps I should say the slave driver...