| KOSE Press Release |
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KOSE Executive Director Jane Carter Responds to Legislative Leadership’s Threat to Not Fund State Employee Market Adjustments “I am disappointed that our state’s legislative leadership described the funding of market adjustments for state employees as a ‘pay increase’ to a group of business interests last Friday. I am equally troubled that these same leaders declared it ‘unlikely’ for state employees to receive the market adjustments to their wages, which are long overdue. As any state employee can tell you, the funding of market adjustments is not pay increase, but a pay stabilization for the 6,000 Kansas state employees that are currently paid under the market rate. As one legislator put it, these are not pay raises but reparations for years of underpayment. According to the latest market survey for this January there are over seventy job classifications below the market rate by double digits and five classifications are well underfunded by 30 percent or more! The Legislature made a promise to the state employees of Kansas; to respect the work they do and to reward it with descent pay that workers of the same classifications receive in nearby states. If this Legislature reneges on its promise to our state employees, then it has lost all its credibility with our state’s hardworking employees.” ### |