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Senate committee passes resolution for 5% public employee pay cut

May 26, 2010 08:58 by author

Yesterday the Senate Restructuring and Reforms Committee passed SJR U, a measure that would impose a 5 percent pay cut for all public employees and freeze wages for 3 years. This would include employees of all levels of government as well as schools and universities.

The resolution is not expected to be taken up in the Senate this week, and with staunch opposition from unions it's questionable as to whether there are even the votes to get this resolution out of the full Senate, much less the Democratically controlled House.

Many League members are concerned about an additional 5 percent cut on top of the already substantial concessions made by municipal employees. Contact your legislators to let them know your concerns regarding this legislation.

Samantha Harkins works for the Michigan Municipal League handling municipal services issues. She can be reached at 517-908-0306 or email at sharkins@mml.org.

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May 27. 2010 18:22

I will leave the state of Michigan if this passes. Plain and simple. I am a young teacher and I am very good at what I do. I could have beena anything but chose to be a teacher because I thought it was a good thing to do with good benefits and good pay eventually. Again, this was a choice because of those things. If this passes, I will leave the State of Michigan. I will go somehwere that appreciates talent and actually wants their students to learn from the best. Michigan will have to settle for whoever they can manage to hire after all the people with talent and resources leave.

Chris

June 1. 2010 13:59

This is wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. 1) I would question the legality of negating properly negotiated union contracts. 2) Further, freezing the wages for the next three years would raise all sorts of questions regarding the labor contract negotiation process. 3)I would question the legality of negating properly negotiated individual services contracts, such as managers, police chiefs, etc. are routinely hired under. 3) This approach assumes that everyone working for a governmental entity makes too much. This is simply not true. There are many municipal employees making $9-10 per hour with little or no benefits. This would treat everyone the same. It is wrong. 4) This assumes that the state would therefor save the revenue sharing money. Not true either. 5) If the intent is to control budgets, they ahev already done that by their repeated and unopredictable
revenue sharing cuts. 5) Such a pay cut would put many people below the wages they were making 2-3 years ago. Wrong again. 6) This is political posturing at its worse and is indicative of what is wrong with our state legislature.

A lot of the surveys that are serving as the basis for these comparisons, include the very highest paid positions along with the entry level employees. This distorts the comparisons very badly.

Kevin Gillette, Manager
Village of Cassopolis

Kevin Gillette

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Senate committee passes resolution for 5% public employee pay cut

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