Posted on 09/03/2012 6:59:26 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
An across-the-board pay increase for 27,700 state employees was shot down Thursday by legislators.
The pay increase was scrapped by the GOP-led Legislative Subcommittee on Employee Relations. The panel voted 6-4 to reject the agreements, with Republican members voting against them and DFLers voting to approve.
A key sticking point for Republicans: Individual employee health premiums would continue to be paid entirely by the state, although employees do pay a portion of the premium for family coverage. Also, the contracts give automatic, yearly "step" increases for workers. Republicans favor merit-based pay increases.
"Shame on you!" union members in the audience chanted as the committee left the Capitol hearing room following the rare rejection vote.
"Today's union leadership are dinosaurs living in the past," said Sen. Mike Parry, R-Waseca, the panel's chairman.
The decision rekindled labor-management strife as a political issue, but is not the final word on the contracts. The contracts are likely to go before the 2013 Legislature, whose makeup will be determined in November, when all 201 seats are on the ballot.
"See you at the polls, guys!" one union activist shouted as the meeting ended.
The contracts include:
• A 2 percent, across-the-board increase for all workers beginning in January.
• Increases in employees' health care co-pays, deductibles and co-insurance.
• Continuation of the state paying 100 percent of the employee's premium, and 85 percent of family or dependent coverage.
• Continuation of annual "step" increases for eligible employees, ranging from 2.7 to 3.5 percent, until they reach the top step. About half of employees receive them.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Good. Hey, union members, you don’t have to work where you are working. You are free to find a better gig
State-paid healthcare and auto-pay increases must end.
That's the same thing they shouted in Wisconsin......how'd that work out for 'em?
But that would destroy the "guaranteed dimocrat vote by complacent brain dead workers who donate to the cause to maintain the status quo."
Although there are some very good and ambitious state workers a majority of them would stay where they are if their pay was cut in half for most wouldn't make it in a job that requires results and demands production to justify pay increases.
Exactly.
Hopefully they’ll start doing all of the crap they did here in WI. MN would look good in the RR column. ;)
Thought this was satire at first. Why do the pigs get more than the farmers?
Pray for America
Unfortunately, unlike Scott Walker, we in Minnesota have the inauspicious Mark Dayton for guv...
Yay, Yay, YAY!!!!
Our 2010 election is paying off well. We took over the MN House and Senate FINALLY!
We have to stop these spending measures in committee, because we ended up with an idiot governor who won by 4,000 votes. A bunch of liberal Republicans (RINO’s) pushed forward an independant candidate who took lots of votes away from our conservative candidate, Tom Emmer. So, we are stuck with Mark Dayton in the Governor’s office.
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