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State workers riled over cuts

Posted on April 30, 2009April 30, 2009 by Staff

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

State workers plan to rally at the Legislature Tuesday to try to convince legislators that recent pay cuts and health insurance hikes are hurting their ranks.

UNC Employee Forum chair Tommy Griffin said he’s heard a steady stream of feedback after Gov. Beverley Perdue’s actions Tuesday exacerbated what was already shaping up as a tough year for state employees.

Citing lower than projected revenues, the governor instituted a 0.5 percent annual pay cut for workers, which will be deducted out of their remaining paychecks for the fiscal year ending June 30. Perdue also is requiring workers to take a 10-hour unpaid furlough.

Griffin said state workers were braced for cuts and expecting the furloughs, but that the pay cuts caught many by surprise. State workers had been working to ease the pain of the furloughs by setting up voluntary ways to spread the burden around. But workers were not consulted about the pay cut.

“It’s a big hit,” Griffin said, “and the less pay you make the more it’s going to hurt. I wish they’d have looked at it a little longer.”

Griffin said higher-paid employees are probably going to weather the cut OK, but that bunching the half-percent cut into the last couple of months will have a big impact on those making less than $30,000 a year.

“Many of the lower-paid workers are already working two jobs just to make ends meet,” Griffin said. “They can’t make up the difference.”

Griffin said he hopes that 10,000 or more state employees turn out for lobby day, scheduled for Tuesday at the General Assembly.

“We have to say to [legislators], ‘You can’t always just put it on state employees,” Griffin said.

State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird said she also doesn’t like the way the cut was set up.

“It was very unfair to lower-income workers,” she said. “If you make in the $20,000 to $30,000 range, it’s a significant chunk out of your paycheck.”
The only upside, Kinnaird said, was that there weren’t job cuts, but that once you factor in higher health care deductibles and higher costs for family coverage, there’s little doubt about the impact on state workers.

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