When North Dakota Public Employees Want A Raise They’re Gonna Get A Raise
I had to chuckle a bit when I read this in the Bismarck Tribune:
When the State Employee Compensation Committee recommended recently that brackets or ranges for pay grades be raised by 8.1 percent and state employees get 4 percent raises in each year of the next biennium, the initial reaction was weary surprise. It seemed, for the moment, that the state’s revenue surplus, more than $1 billion, would be spent before it was collected or worse.
Actually, it’s not a done deal or even close. And, there’s more merit in the salary recommendations than initial impressions suggested.
The compensation committee’s proposal marks the beginning of a long, multi-step process that isn’t complete until both chambers of the North Dakota Legislature agree and the governor signs the action into law. We are five or six months and many hours of debate away from that happening.
Many hours of debate. Yeah. Right.
Let me remind you that government is North Dakota’s biggest industry, and that there are some 75,600 government employees in the state:
They represent 21% of North Dakota’s labor force. Basically, one in five North Dakotans works for the government.
Setting aside for a moment that astonishingly unnecessary number of bureaucrats, does anyone really think there’s a politician in North Dakota with the cojones to tell 1/5th of the workforce they don’t get a raise? That’s one hefty voting bloc to tick off.
There will be some debate on this, and the amount of the raise will be reduced a bit so that the politicians can pat themselves on the back for being “fiscally responsible,” but ultimately the government employees are getting this raise. Because they may well be the biggest voting bloc in the state.
