—-As potential next Texas Governor Matthew McConaughey says.
Governor Parson is going to ask the legislature next year to give salaried state workers a 5.5% pay raise and pay hourly workers $15 an hour.
The governor proposes; the legislature disposes. We’ve all heard that. So proposing is one thing. Accomplishing something is something else. But this is a good move.
The state minimum wage is now $11.15. And salaries for our state workers consistently have been among the bottom five or six states. Openpayrolls.com calculates the average state employee last year made $28,871, 56.2% below the national average for government employees.
The minimum wage boost would affect about 11,000 state workers.
A review of state employee salaries five years ago by the data-mining study organization, Stacker.com ranked Missouri 47th out of 51 with the highest and the lowest salaries in the same general field—education. With the average monthly salary of state and local employees then, the average monthly pay for all state and local employees was $3,746. The highest paid industry was listed as “Education,” where the average higher education monthly pay was $6,796. The lowest monthly salary then was in elementary and secondary education: $2.394.
Myron Cohen, a comedian who was a frequent guest on Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town” show, used to tell the story of a fellow who came home from work early and found a naked man in his bedroom closet. “What are you doing in there?” he is asked. “Well,” says the naked man, “w-well…..everybody has to be somewhere.”
Somebody has to be at the low end of everything, including state employees. Missouri has been content to be that “somebody” in too many categories for far too long. The governor’s proposal is not likely to raise Missouri’s state workers very many notches on the poorly-paid lists. But a pay raise of about five percent for hourly workers and 5.5% for salaried employees will be a big jump for our friends and neighbors who don’t deserve the disdain they often feel when they disappear each day into the offices and cubicles where the business of a 6.1-million member corporation called Missouri is run.
Unfortunately, there are reports of legislatures in several states that are seeing all of the federal COVID relief and infrastructure funds pouring in and they have started thinking of cutting taxes instead of realizing the advantages that come from the one-time infusion while maintaining competent levels of service under current taxing levels.
We hope Missouri’s legislature will not adopt the same attitude—-although we know there are those who will continue the state’s tradition of taking steps that make it harder for the state to pay for the promises it has made to its citizens for services and programs.
Just this once, let the deserving folks in cubicles have a little financial elbow room.