No comparison between sectors
I would like to commend Drew DeSilver and Andrew Garber on their thorough examination of state and nonstate workers’ compensation [“How state workers’ pay really stacks up,” page one, March 7]. It should provide a quieting pacifier to the sophomoric whining we often read on the editorial pages. The Times’ editorial staff consistently proposes reducing state workers’ compensation as a simplistic solution to the state budget crisis.
As the astute authors point out, a direct comparison [of state and nonstate workers] is not accurate. In fact, professional-level employees of the state receive less monetary compensation than their private-sector colleagues. Through the boom times of the ’90s and until recently, I watched colleagues leave state work for better pay in the private sector. The benefits and gradual-pay schedules of state work was an incentive for me as a family man.
Now, as desperation sets in with the slowing economy, the editorial board suggests that we — after committing our careers to the state — should be denied the maturation of our investment. Conservatives have been accused of underfunding government work in order to attract only the inept, thus strengthening their argument that government is incompetent. Is this approach what the editorial board is endorsing?
— Thomas McClure, Seattle
Anecdotal evidence points to inconsistencies
Apparently Drew DeSilver and Andrew Garber missed the story about a Washington State Ferries deckhand who collected nearly $73,000 in travel expenses last year — $13,000 more than his annual salary [“Limits sought for ferry-job benefits,” Around the Northwest, March 7]. In fairness to them I must have missed something in their story about salaries and compensation that didn’t address health-care and retirement benefits — especially when the age old credo was “they get better retirement benefits because their salaries are inferior to the private sector.”
My daughter works in the Kent School District — a state employee — and has a medical-and-dental plan that would cost the private sector employee $1,000 per month and yet The Times’ reporters say it’s “difficult to compare” benefits and pensions. The health-care and retirement benefits should have been the focus of story and not the state workers’ salaries.
Please think about the retirement-plan costs of 149,000 or so current state workers and compare that with the private sector.
— Drew Popson, Kent