{"id":30298,"date":"2023-12-04T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-state-worker-pay-has-improved-other-jobs-still-pay-more\/"},"modified":"2023-12-04T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T19:00:00","slug":"colorado-state-worker-pay-has-improved-other-jobs-still-pay-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-state-worker-pay-has-improved-other-jobs-still-pay-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado state worker pay has improved. Other jobs still pay more"},"content":{"rendered":"State workers make 8% less than their peers in comparable jobs. And the state\u2019s retirement benefits don\u2019t make up for the pay gap like they used to\n

\"Skip
Skip Miller, president of Colorado WINS, the state employees union, speaks at a news conference at the Colorado Capitol on Friday, Jan. 10, 2019, announcing legislation that would allow state employees to collectively bargain. (Moe Clark, The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After three straight years of pay raises, Colorado state workers are in better financial shape than they were when the pandemic hit.<\/p>\n

But they could still make more money working somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Those were the main takeaways from the state\u2019s latest pay study, presented to the legislature\u2019s Joint Budget Committee last week. The annual report found that state employees make about 8% less than workers in comparable public and private sector jobs. And that\u2019s even after this year\u2019s 5% across-the-board pay raise.<\/p>\n

Under the state\u2019s collective bargaining agreement with Colorado WINS, the union for state employees, workers are owed another 3% bump in the 2024-25 budget year, which starts July 1. For the first time since the late 1990s, the state is also implementing a tiered system that will provide regular raises based on years of service.<\/p>\n

But the strong labor market has made it harder for the state to catch up to other employers. The average employer is expected to give 4% raises over the coming year, the study found.<\/p>\n

The presentation, from the state\u2019s Department of Personnel and Administration, drew concerns from state budget writers, who said the government shouldn\u2019t rely too much on Coloradans\u2019 willingness to make less in the name of public service.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of us is here for the money,\u201d said Rep. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat who serves on the JBC. \u201cThat being said, having an entire state government where (public service) is the primary reason for folks working is not sustainable in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Shannon Bird, the JBC\u2019s chair, put it more bluntly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to pay people,\u201d said Bird, D-Westminster. \u201cIt\u2019s always a frustrating comment when people say \u2018oh, nobody goes into this for the money.\u2019 Well, we all go into our work to pay our bills. The state should be an employer of choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, the evidence suggests Colorado is not an employer of choice. High turnover left around 1 in 5 state jobs vacant in the wake of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Hilary Glasgow, executive director of Colorado WINS, says the employment crisis is a result of decades of underfunding that has left the state as a de facto \u201ctraining ground for the private sector.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the current pay structure, she told The Colorado Sun, \u201cthere\u2019s no reward for longevity. There\u2019s no reward for seniority.\u201d Employees would get frustrated when they couldn\u2019t get a raise and leave after a few years, taking their skills and institutional knowledge with them.<\/p>\n

When the new longevity-based system kicks in, Colorado will look more like other public sector employers, including the federal government, which competes directly with the state for some workers.<\/p>\n

Implementing it all won\u2019t come cheap. The 3% across-the-board raises will cost the state $93 million next year, according to a JBC staff report. Getting employees up to their new pay grades under the longevity system will cost even more, $109 million.<\/p>\n

The elephant in the room is the state pension. The legislature\u2019s attempts to shore up the Public Employees\u2019 Retirement Association\u2019s troubled finances have taken a bite out of employee pay in the form of higher contributions and worse benefits.<\/p>\n

The pension had long been the sweetener offered in exchange for public sector service. \u201cDespite there being lower pay, you had the benefits of retirement and health care that were good,\u201d Glasgow said. \u201cAs those benefits have been eroded over time, it is less of an incentive.<\/p>\n

Today, employees contribute 11% of each paycheck to PERA, up from 8% before the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the state puts in nearly 22% \u2013 most of which goes to pay off the state\u2019s unfunded debt to retirees. That\u2019s a lot of money for a pension that studies suggest may no longer be competitive with the retirement benefits provided by similar employers.<\/p>\n

The personnel department\u2019s most recent study from 2021 is outdated. But back then, PERA provided 29% less value to workers than the average pension.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s less clear how the pension compares to private sector retirement benefits. On its own, a PERA pension provides significantly more value than the typical 401(k), but PERA members don\u2019t pay into or receive Social Security. Budget writers and PERA officials suggested this week it may be time for a new study. The last time the state legislature commissioned independent assessments of PERA\u2019s retirement package was in 2014, when the pension provided better benefits than it does today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

State workers make 8% less than their peers in comparable jobs. And the state\u2019s retirement benefits don\u2019t make up for the pay gap like they used to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30298"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}