Scientist Union's Talks Stall Over Pay 80
HughPickens.com writes: The Sacramento Bee reports that the labor contract between California's state government and the 2,800 employees represented by the California Association of Professional Scientists expired this week, spotlighting yet again the long-running feud over whether the tiny union's members should earn as much as their peers in federal and local governments and private industry. "It's a challenge to keep people motivated," says Rita Hypnarowski. "We talk about retaining the best and the brightest, but I can see that's not going to happen." A recent survey by the Brown administration found that the total compensation for half of state-employed chemists is less than $8,985 per month ($5,715 in salary, plus $3,270 in benefit costs). That's 33 percent less than the median total compensation for federal chemists, nearly 13 percent less than the midpoint for local-government chemists and almost 6 percent below the private sector.
Members of the union perform a wide variety of tasks, everything from fighting food-borne illnesses to mopping up the Refugio State Beach oil spill. For example, Cassandra McQuaid left a job last year at the Department of Public Health's state-of-the-art Richmond laboratories where she tracked foodborne illnesses. It's the kind of vital, behind-the-scenes work that goes unnoticed until an E. coli outbreak makes headlines and local health officials need a crack team of scientists to unravel how it happened. "It really came down to money," says McQuaid. "I just couldn't live in the Bay Area on a state salary."
Members of the union perform a wide variety of tasks, everything from fighting food-borne illnesses to mopping up the Refugio State Beach oil spill. For example, Cassandra McQuaid left a job last year at the Department of Public Health's state-of-the-art Richmond laboratories where she tracked foodborne illnesses. It's the kind of vital, behind-the-scenes work that goes unnoticed until an E. coli outbreak makes headlines and local health officials need a crack team of scientists to unravel how it happened. "It really came down to money," says McQuaid. "I just couldn't live in the Bay Area on a state salary."
Why live there then? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you work for the state, where do you HAVE to live in the bay area? Shouldn't the state alleviate the issue by having offices for these people in other, less expensive, areas of the state? You could attract a lot of people at a lower salary using quality of life as an attraction if you locate somewhere outside the major cities... there's a lot of California and all of it is not as expensive as the bay area.
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Putting everything in the capital would make it more affordable. Sacramento's cost of living is around the national average and much cheaper than most of California.
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108 is awfully cold, if you use SI units.
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Units should be of the appropriate size to what you're measuring. Farenheit is more appropriate for judging room temperature and even cooking temperature when you don't need to be precise enough to get down to fractions of a degree.
The metric system has a lot of value, especially when doing precise measurements. When doing rough measurements at human scale it runs into problems. The meter is about the right size, but centimeter, or even decimeter, isn't a good replacement for foot. And for many purposes
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that would be the "rainbowiest"
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LA is not a single city, San Francisco is. LA is the larger metropolitan area, but that's a lot more than one city. (Of course, the original poster said "bay area", not San Francisco.)
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I guess some people just need to have the "nightlife" even if they only get time to experience it on the weekends really.
When I was young, free and single, the only thing stopping me from going out every night was money.
There's more to life than work.
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There are a fuckload of people living in the Bay Area on less than 107k/year. Fuck off.
Silly. How about less than 68k/year? Because the 107k/year includes salary + the cost of the employees benefits to the employer. The cost of employees benefits don't make to on your paycheck and certainly don't pay any bills.
So, for a single person making 68k/year, you are netting about $47,000 after normal taxation. But that's not all! Now, deduct health contributions, retirement contributions, etc and your looking at putting about 42k/year in the bank if you're lucky. I don't live in the bay area so
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Depends. How safe a neighborhood do you want? I believe that the normal asking rent for an apartment in Oakland was around $1500/month a few years ago...but I haven't actually been looking in the last 30 years, so I don't know what neighborhood is implied by that price.
12 * 1,500 = 18,000, so it depends on your other expenses...and whether you want to live that cheaply. OTOH, neighborhood is *VERY* important. And I also don't know what size apartment I'm talking about.
My suspicion, however, is that there
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Can you live in the Bay Area taking home 42k/year?
I did for years (also working for the state). I was living here for nearly a decade before I made more than that, in fact; as a grad student my stipend was less than $20k. I have no dependents or debts to pay off, no severe medical conditions, and my benefits were always sufficient, so it was actually very easy. I lived alone for the majority of that time, but even when I shared houses or apartments it was in relatively nice neighborhoods. (All rental, o
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Silly. How about less than 68k/year? Because the 107k/year includes salary + the cost of the employees benefits to the employer.
Are you telling me California has legalized kickbacks? WTF are "employees benefits to the employer", and how can it be legal to require an employee to pay his employer part of his salary to work? Especially if that employer is the state government.
Now back to the story ~$9000.00 a fucking month, and you can't live off that? Seriously, if someone making over a hundred thousand dollars a year is living in poverty there is a serious economic problem there, and THAT needs to be dealt with before more tax doll
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There's a difference between pay and total compensation. I get paid a certain amount. I also get several types of subsidized insurance, a 401(k) match, the cleverly named "employer" part of FICA paid for me, and that mounts up. The amount of employee benefits does seem high to me, but I don't know any details, or what they're counting. I've seen my time off presented as part of employee compensation, so if I got four weeks it would be listed as 1/13 of my total pay.
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You're parsing this wrong. Try "the 107k/year includes salary + the employer's cost to provide benefits to the employee". The benefits/fringe do sound excessive - most places they're more like 25-30% of the salary, here it looks to be more like 60%.
OK, maybe I did parse it wrong, now that I reread the original, I see it. But $170k is $170k, even if some of it is in benefits. That 25 to 30 percent for health/dental/retirement/whatever is money you'd be spending on those things anyway, and most likely a lot cheaper than you'd get on your own. So my statement sill stands on the economic situation, the rent gouging, and over inflated real estate going on there needs to be stopped.
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There are a fuckload of people living in the Bay Area on less than 107k/year.
Yes, and they are all living in the same apartment...
*Rimshot*
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In fact a lot of the state jobs are in Sacramento, the capitol, which is a very affordable area. Not sure why they can't move these jobs there. Perhaps the problem is that the top talent would rather live in the bay area so they have to hire there.
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Everyone in the midwest has been saying this to rent-is-too-damn-high whiners on both coasts for a long time now, and nobody listens.
I have a number of friends working in technical fields that live in the midwest (places like Ohio) that would strongly disagree with you...
There are many who do find healthier lifestyle choices compelling.
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And you allowed your freedom to choose where you lived to be taken? Oh, that's right, you were in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.
He had the choice to take the job or not.
It's not as bad as google expecting staff to stay on the "campus" all the hours god sends.
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If only California could move its capital to a cheaper location like Sacramento, that would solve all its problems.
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How pithy. So explain the very quote from the article then complaining about housing pricing IN THE BAY AREA. It's obvious the scientists jobs are NOT IN SACRAMENTO or there would not be a problem, capiche?
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"Consider that we have homeless people and other poor people who aren't necessarily helped by higher taxes in this country."
And then consider that those homeless are probably the ones that most benefit from the kind of jobs these people are doing, since are the most exposed to health/environment base standards.
"I want to say there should be a cap for how much government employees can earn for employment that is consistent over time."
It is said the if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. If you are paying below
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"If everyone wants to get paid above average, half of the available positions will remain unfilled."
Only if there's something like 'basic rent' in place.
In the meantime, in the real world, it's not so much about what you, as an employee, want to be paid, but about what you, as an employer, want from your employees. And then, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
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"But what I'm getting at is when the government pays employees way above the per capita income of taxpayers."
I see your point, but I think is moot both in practical and ethical grounds because tax-to-wages is not a one-to-one map.
In practical, it's just a market, offer and demand: if you want the best (not that you *must* want them, maybe your needs are not up to the best and brigthest but *if* you need them), you need to have three things:
1) Have a selection process to filter out everybody but the best.
2) Have a process in place to detect the mistakes on point 1 above and/or those that, still being the best when hired, may be not the best now.
3) Offer the highest pay (not necessarily just money, other perks included) so the best apply to your selection process to start with.
And with regards to ethics, I don't see how someone can be comfortable paying, say, a bartender the same than to a, say, brilliant doctorate in something you really feel useful. It is not as if that any single doctor needs to be payed in full by any single bartender's taxes. It is still reasonable for an hypothetical town of "humble farmers" to pay their, say, doctor, or judge, or sheriff, above their own average income if they feel their value to the community is also above their own average.
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So, you're a petty individual suffering from crab mentality. [wikipedia.org] Good thing not all people think the way you do, or we would have never gotten the right to vote, have weekends, or overtime.
Fix disparities everywhere (Score:2)
In 10 occupations, the state’s total compensation was at or above the market. In four occupations, the state’s total compensation was below the market.
So California needs to cut (or not change) the compensation of ten occupations and increase it for four. Seems reasonable.
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No one has a gun to their head forcing them to work for/in CA.
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It's right there in the summary: private only pays 6% more. That's practically nothing. Federal is where the big bucks are.
Burried the lead (Score:2)
nearly 13 percent less than the midpoint for local-government chemists and almost 6 percent below the private sector
.
So, while this particular group is complaining that they are relatively underpaid, it seems,on average, government employees are overpaid.
Let them train some H1-B visa holders to replace themselves and help get the government average down to the private sector average.
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Yeah, this is really the amazing thing in science. There are a few high paying private sector jobs, but the best early-to-mid career positions are in the government.
When I worked in government, there was no understanding that while it was necessary to pay early career engineers well, there was no need to offer high salaries to scientists to recruit good people. The lab I worked at paid engineers and scientists on the same scale, which was great (for me, a physicist).
Retaining scientists is a different mat
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"So, while this particular group is complaining that they are relatively underpaid, it seems,on average, government employees are overpaid. "
No. Private sector scientists are woefully underpaid for their skills and contributions. I've worked alongside chemists and biologists for the last 15 years. Staff Scientists (the equivalent of a career software developer, whatever they're calling themselves these days) typically make $60-80k in the private sector. These are people with advanced degrees (lab techs, tho
Scientists' Union? (Score:2)
Newsflash!
Scientists strike! They say "No working science until they're paid better!"
In other news!
*BOOM!*
Private Sector Chemists Lowest Paid? (Score:1)
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To make sense of this, you need to figure out what the real job mix is. "Chemist" covers a lot of things. In some fields, the Feds tend to contract out the lower-level jobs, and keep the higher-paid people on the payroll. If Fed chemists pretty much all have ten years of experience, then they could make less than their private sector counterparts while Federal chemists as a whole made more than the average.