Gov. Schweitzer signs bill enacting state pay plan

It’s official: The pay freeze on Montana state employee salaries is over. More than 100 people, including MEA-MFT members, state legislators and local officials, were at the Montana State [Men’s] Prison in Deer Lodge Feb. 24 for Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s (D) bill-signing ceremony of the state employee pay plan.

The bill enacts the two-year pay plan MEA-MFT negotiated with Schweitzer in early January. Under the deal, state employees represented by the MEA-MFT will receive a 3.5 percent pay raise or $1,005, whichever is greater, starting October 2005, and a 4 percent increase or $1,118 starting Oct. 1, 2006.

“This agreement is a small but important step toward recognizing the valuable work state employees do for Montanans,” MEA-MFT president Eric Feaver said in a statement. “It does not repair the damage done to state employees in the past, with 18 months of frozen salaries followed by an insulting 25-cent-per-hour raise. But it is a step toward a brighter future.”

Feaver says this is the first time a state employee pay plan has cleared the Legislature so early in its session. “We safely guided it out of harm’s way as legislators continue to quarrel bitterly over funding [education], the university system, healthcare and other big ticket items,” he notes.

Enactment of the pay plan reinforces what AFT Public Employees and its locals have been telling members: Legislative and political action are crucial for both public sector unions and the employees they represent. “We worked hard to get Schweitzer and a Democratic Legislature [elected], and we did that to get a better deal for state employees,” Feaver said when the union reached the agreement with the Schweitzer administration. MEA-MFT started negotiations for the pay plan in August with then-Gov. Judy Martz’s (R) administration, which initially proposed continuing the pay freeze.

“We should all remember to give thanks to the 50 Democrats and one courageous Republican legislator, Rep. Bernie Olson, for casting the 51 ballots necessary to codify the pay plan,” Feaver says.

MEA-MFT members overwhelmingly ratified the pay plan by mail-in ballot in mid-January. MEA-MFT represents 450 workers at the prison where the bill-signing took place, and 1,000 members, including teachers, in the Deer Lodge area. MEA-MFT represents nearly 4,000 state employees in more than a dozen executive branch departments and agencies and the university system.