THE ISSUE:
The state has frozen the salaries of most of its management employees.
THE STAKES:
A bill awaiting the governor's signature will provide an equitable fix to the problem.
While most of their union counterparts have successfully negotiated salary increases, New York state's 8,500 management/confidential employees have been left out in the cold, having no broad-based raises since 2009.
The financial crisis had prompted then-Gov. David Paterson to unilaterally freeze pay increases for this class of state employees who range from top managers to secretaries who work in "confidential" jobs. Since 1972, under an amendment to the Taylor Law, these workers have no right to collective bargaining.
It's not difficult to understand why the state has balked at increasing their pay — money was and remains extremely tight and, well, the state doesn't have to. Pay and benefits for management/confidential workers are determined by the executive branch.
Such withholding of pay increases when so many of the people working alongside them are better and more consistently compensated is just bad public policy. It stifles public servants seeking to advance their careers. It breeds resentment. In many cases union-represented staffers make the same or more than their managers. It creates a situation where rank and file workers shy away from advancement, for fear of uncertainty over their future financial situation if they are elevated to the ranks of management.
This is no way to motivate and reward good performance. It's no way to treat your management team.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo can easily remedy this imbalance by signing a bill approved in the spring by the Legislature with strong bipartisan support. It would create a special seven-member commission that would make recommendations and mandate salary increases for the management/confidential workers on a four-year cycle.
Three members would be appointed by the governor, one by the state comptroller, and one each by the Senate and Assembly leadership. The final member would be the choice of the Organization of New York Management Confidential Employees, which advocates for these workers and strongly supports this solution.
The proposal was modeled after a similar panel created to set pay for judges, who had gone more than a decade without a raise. Before the change, judicial pay was snarled in the politics of compensation for lawmakers, statewide officials and commissioners.
Establishing this nonpolitical salary commission would foster fairness and respect in the state workplace and restore the career ladder for all state employees, unionized or not. Mr. Cuomo, who has until Friday to decide what to do, should sign the bill this week, put a fair, rational process in place and end the salary freeze these 8,500 state employees have been subjected to.