“I appreciated the Jan. 6 editorial against increasing state taxes to balance the budget, however I’m afraid that your perceptions of state employees and their benefits are mistaken and misleading.
You assert that state employees generally pay less out-of-pocket for their medical coverage than private sector employees. State employees currently contribute 12 percent of the medical premiums. Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2008 survey of Employer Health Benefits found that for individual coverage, covered workers pay less than 25 percent of the total premium cost at 78 percent of firms with more than 200 workers, and on average all employers pay 85 percent of the premium costs for individual coverage, making Washington State’s employee medical benefit similar to public and private firms.
Furthermore, in 2008 the most popular state employee plan – the Uniform Medical Plan, cost the state about $1500 less for individual employee coverage due to lower plan costs than the $3983/year that employers paid on average according to the Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
Second, you assert that employees get step increases for each year on the job and these raises are “just for staying on the job.” While step increases are an awkward and somewhat outdated system, the state currently has no system for providing merit raises to the majority of its employees and this program is more of an actuarial tool for the state that incentivizes tenure for the first six years in a job class and spreads the full cost of hiring staff over time.
Furthermore, as I’m sure you’re aware, most (about 62 percent according to the Department of Personnel) state employees are not eligible for step increases because they have reached the top step of their classification. For these employees they must rely on cost of living increases to avoid losing purchasing power.
Finally, while cost of living increases happen often, but not always, as you suggest, they also have neither kept up with inflation nor average wage indices. Since 1967 state cost of living adjustments have added 309 percent to wages, which sounds impressive except the national average wage index is up 793 percent and inflation is up 575 percent over that same time period.
State employees have seen real wages decline in almost every time period. Between 1998 and 2008 inflation increased by 29 percent while state wages received 21 percent cost of living adjustments.
While state employees make a convenient punching bag for editorials, you should really check your facts before (mis)directing the ire of your readers. Further punishment of state employees will inevitably accelerate the brain drain in public agencies and make the state ever more reliant on higher cost service providers.”
Phil Bloch, Bellevue
