After a two-year pay freeze, North Dakota Public Employees Association leaders lobby the Legislature for fiscal relief

The North Dakota Legislature’s compensation to state workers has not only been making the news, it was the front-page above-the-fold story in the Bismarck Tribune, the capital city’s newspaper, following the first legislative hearing on state worker pay.

Although the hearing made news, the real union news is what the North Dakota Public Employees Association (NDPEA), a statewide local of AFT Public Employees, did leading up to the Jan. 17 House appropriations subcommittee hearing.

NDPEA got the attention of lawmakers last March when it went public with worker responses to a union-sponsored job satisfaction survey. Nearly 3,000 employees responded to the survey, and 60 percent said they were dissatisfied with their salaries. One respondent succinctly said in a written comment: “I will retire in poverty as I have worked in poverty.”

Armed with the survey results and its 7,000-plus written comments, NDPEA, led by president Gary Feist, started meeting with lawmakers that month—almost a year before the Legislature was scheduled to reconvene in January 2005 for its biennial session.

Feist told legislators that the union was looking for a “significant” salary increase. “They asked me what I considered significant,” Feist recalls. “I told them that we would be looking for 4 percent and 4 percent plus maintaining the fully funded family health insurance plan.”

The proposal, Feist adds, was “not out of line” considering the Legislature froze state employee pay for 2003-05.

The dialogue between the union and lawmakers has continued ever since.

Meanwhile, the State Employee Compensation Commission reinforced the union’s position in October when it unanimously recommended 4 percent pay raises for each year of the 2005-07 biennium, starting July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006, respectively.

The commission, which is made up of two legislators from each party and four state employees, including Feist, went a step further in addressing state salaries at Feist’s prodding, recommending a $5 million fund for equity raises to help state workers regain some of the ground lost after two consecutive years of no pay increases.

NDPEA Members Turn Out in Force for Hearing

More than 150 people, many of them NDPEA members, packed the room for the Jan. 17 hearing—the first scheduled for this legislative session on state worker pay.

NDPEA member Michael Stebbins, who has worked for the state for 17 years, was among those who testified. Stebbins, a master equipment operator for the Department of Transportation, said he “missed both Christmas and New Year’s celebrations with my family to keep the highways open and safe for you and your family.”

Then he dropped the bomb: “My family of four qualifies for low-income, subsidized [school] lunches and fuel assistance on my current salary. I know I deserve a fair wage. Four percent and 4 percent is a start.”

Feist cited the North Dakota Human Resource Management Services compensation report as reason enough for the Legislature to pass the two-year cumulative 8 percent pay increase. The report, he said, concludes that state worker wages “have fallen farther behind the market over the last two years and now are 13 percent to 30 percent below market.”

Four percent raises for each year of the biennium, the $5 million equity pool, and maintenance of the health insurance benefit “will go a long way toward improving the morale of public employees and ensuring a feeling that the quality services they provide to the citizens of North Dakota are valued by this Legislature,” Feist said, adding that the Legislature would really be “making an investment in its greatest asset—its people.”

Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple testified on behalf of Gov. John Hoeven’s proposal, which calls for a 4 percent raise starting July 1, a 3 percent increase July 1, 2006, and establishment of a $5 million fund to address pay inequities. The governor’s proposal also opens the door to a 4 percent increase in 2006 if agencies find savings within their budgets.

The Republican-led House responded to NDPEA and its members, however, bucking the governor’s proposal guaranteeing 4 percent in the first year and 3 percent in the second year. “HB 1050 calls for the 4 percent and 4 percent, and the $5 million equity fund,” says NDPEA executive director Chris Runge, who attributes the newfound interest in supporting state employees to NDPEA’s “kicking up such a stink last March and staying on message ever since.”