6A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FEATURE
...
WEDNESDAY, NOV.28, 2001
Raises not a priority for state legislature
Mike Auchard, president of the KU Classified Senate, enrolled in an economics course this semester through KU's tuition assistance program. "That's one of the benefits the University makes available to all employees." Auchard said. He started school at KU in 1963, and resumed taking courses in 1996.
MIKE AUCHARD: "The state legislature and the governor for quite some time have been reluctant to pass pay increases that are more than the cost of living adjustment."
The majority of classified staff who earn poverty-level wages are custodians, like Johnathan Neal. "In the future, I hope I won't have to be doing this," Neal said. "I want to be going to school."
JOHNATHAN NEAL: "They spend two or three million dollars on a building-why can't they pay us enough to provide for our kids?"
Dennis Constance, legislative director for the KU Classified Senate, organizes annual lobbying trips to Topeka for KU classified staff. "We take a vacation day, our own time, to do this," Constance said. The Legislative Information Day has not met much success.
DENNIS CONSTANCE:
"I think state employees are taken for granted, for the most part. We are integral not just for the University but all over the state."
CONTINUED FROM 1A
Employees Retirement System.
of the last legislative
At the end of the last legislative session, classified staff received their smallest increase in 20 years
"It's a declining situation." Constance said.
The politics of poverty
State classified employee wages follow a chart called the "pay matrix," which assigns each employee classification a base pay grade. A raise along the pay grade is called a "step increase."
is called to help KU custodians,
Neal, like other KU custodians,
is assigned to pay grade 11, and he
is currently on the lowest step. His
hourly wage is $8. In 1983 the
corresponding grade offered
$5.83. Neal would earn over $10
an hour if the 1983 wage had kept
up with inflation.
David Burress, associate scientist for the KU Policy Research Institute, said that classified staff's buying power had declined by 50 percent in the last 20 years.
"People in the same situation today have less real income then they did then," Burress said.
they did them. While Gov. Bill Graves abolished the lowest three steps on the pay matrix during the last legislative session, he proposed only a 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for state employees. A 1.5 percent increase took effect in June with another 1.5 percent increase scheduled for December.
increase Senate authority Graves and the legislature also did not approve raises this fiscal year.
year.
Some classified staff perceive the legislature as condoning poverty, Constance said, though he doesn't agree with that assertion.
Raises and COLAs are among the last items considered by the legislature, and Classified Senate representatives would like to see employee wages become more of a priority.
"What we get is often influenced by how much is promised elsewhere earlier," Constance said.
Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence,
acknowledged that some KU staff
are frustrated by being considered
last but said it is a procedural
necessity.
“When we're looking at giving more money for whatever, we wait for the closest estimate of what our state revenues will be next year,” Sloan said. “Kansas has a law saying that we cannot deficit spend.”
Sloan said that considering state employee wages last "is the governor's and the legislature's effort not to give them false hope, especially in such bad economic times like now."
That explanation wins little sympathy from Mike Auchard, president of the KU Classified Senate and student housing employee for 16 years. He has worked with Sloan to improve conditions for classified employees.
"During a good part of the 90s, things weren't tight at all," Auchard said. "Instead of trying to use these revenues to make up for the lean years, they used tax abatements to buy votes in the next election."
In the mid- and late 80s when classified staff lobbied the state, Auchard said legislators responded by citing tight fiscal times.
"The state ought to provide employees enough to support a family," he said. "They shouldn't be at or below the poverty level to start with. Given the history of wages, if you start at the poverty level you certainly won't get above it."
Constance said the low pay for classified staff was not just an economic issue, but a moral indignity.
Not enough to pay the bills
Surviving on poverty level wages is even more difficult in Lawrence because of its high cost of living. The Kaw Valley Living Wage Alliance recently lobbied the city commission to require businesses receiving city tax abatements to pay a living wage, which the alliance set at a minimum of $9.14 an hour.
Federal poverty guidelines
Hawkins has two other jobs: a weekly route delivering Xtras, a supplemental publication of The Lawrence Journal-World, and she cleans rental homes two days a month to earn $90.
"KPERS is based on our final average salary," Auchard said, "and since our pay raises have not kept pace with the real world, our retirement amounts are going to reflect that."
Although that hourly wage exceeds what many KU classified staff earn, it is not enough, said Jacque Gibbons, associate professor of sociology, anthropology and social work at Kansas State University.
Despite 18 years at the University, Lathrom earns more at HyVee after working there only one year.
Gibbons co-authored a state commissioned report to establish the hourly wage needed to live in different communities in the state
"I suspect a lot of people on the lower side of the pay scale can't afford to live in Lawrence," Gibbs said.
Mary Lathrom is also scrambling to cover her expenses. She works more than 80 hours a week at two full-time jobs: as a custodial supervisor at Ellsworth Hall, and manager of the Italian Express at Hy-Vee, 4000 W. Sixth Street.
Mark Horowitz, Springfield, Mass., graduate student and KVIWA staff member, said Gibbons' study suggested that a minimum living wage in Lawrence would be approximately $13 an hour.
year.
The difference, she said, is that no money for retirement comes out of her Hy-Vee check, while about $45 is deducted from her University pay for the KPERS program.
Custodial supervisor Margaret Hawkins and her retired husband, Mike, reside in Lawrence and are used to living on a low income
Hawkins is in the same pay grade as Johnathan Neal — though on a higher step — and takes home $480 every two weeks, she said.
Scouring newspapers for sales and discounts is a weekly ritual for Hawkins. The调料 she clips determines what they eat.
"You have to count pennies," Hawkins said. "But that's no different than what most people at my pay scale do."
SOURCE: Federal Register by the Dept. of Health and Human Services
The difference between faculty retirement programs and KPERS is another inequity. Auchard said.
Mike Auchard said KPERS is better than nothing, but not by much.
Melissa Carr/KANSAN
KPERS is a fixed contribution system; for fiscal year 2002, 4 percent of each employee check goes into the program while the state contributes 4.18 percent.
Lathrom estimates that when she retires in eight years, KPERS will provide her with only $600-800 each month.
While she is resigned to her situation — she doesn't mind the work and had few work options without a high school diploma — she encourages younger KU employees to look elsewhere for a job.
"You're not going to go anywhere doing what I'm doing," Hawkins said. "There are no promotions, nowhere to go."
"I don't want to ruin my credit or file for bankruptcy." Lathrom said, "so I'm doing the best I can."
Striving for improvement
Hawkins expects KPERS to provide $350 a month, if she's lucky.
An office assistant in the psychology department, she volunteered for extra responsibilities last year in order to apply for a promotion and a raise. However, KU's human resources department denied the application.
Cindy Sexton said she's traveling the same road to nowhere.
State retirement contributions
"I thought more responsibilities, more duties, equaled more pay," Sexton said. "It didn't quite work out that way."
In contrast, 5.5 percent of each faculty paycheck - which average $65,029 - goes toward retirement while KU contributes another 8.5 percent, and faculty can choose among four companies to manage their funds.
Lathron works two jobs and rents out her basement apartment to pay her mortgage and repay the medical expenses accrued during the five years her husband lay ill before he died in 1996. He was an employee in the KU maintenance shop for 21 years.
Her after-tax, take-home pay is about $1,100 each month, and goes toward her $450 mortgage, $300 car payments, groceries and other bills. On top of that, her 7-year-old daughter, Chelsea, needs braces. Sexton already has paid $250 for the braces this year. The remaining $3,300 in dental expenses is not covered by her insurance.
800 others
"What am I going to do with $600 to $800, except get another job?" she said.
SOURCE: Central States Survey 2001
"Where am I supposed to come up with $3,300?" Sexton asked. "I never even have enough for groceries."
Melissa Carr/KANSAN
cerrles.
Habitat for Humanity selected Sexton last year as one of a handful Douglas County residents who qualified for an interest free home.
Linda Klinker, program manager for Lawrence Habitat for Humanity, said income and federal poverty guidelines are factored into the decision about whom to help.
"If you can go to a bank and get a mortgage, you won't qualify for our program," Klinker said.
the side
"That extra $20 I get for cleaning this weekend, that's grocery money," she said.
our program.
Sexton also receives a monthly Social Security Survivor's check after her husband's death four years ago. Even with the extra money, Sexton cleans homes on the side.
In a moment of frustration, Sexton sent an angry e-mail last year to Chancellor Robert Hemenway urging him to protest the legislature's failure to provide raises for classified employees.
Hemenway immediately responded, expressing sympathy for her situation.
"The bottom line is that there are very good arguments to be made to increase the classified employees' salaries." Hemenway said recently. "I'd like to see our classified employees be better paid, but improvements in the system are hard to sell politically without some kind of merit-pay system."
Hemenway established a committee last year to investigate the feasibility of separating the University's classified employees from the state workforce.
But discussion of a merit-based pay system, rather than standard across-the-board raises, met with resistance from classified employees on the chancellor's committee.
"All the classified employees in the state are lumped together," he said, and this makes it difficult to lobby just for those who work for the University.
"We found that many classified employees simply didn't trust a merit system." Hemenway said. "I think you have to have some merit components in whatever system you attempt and I think there are ways to do that and make the system fair for everybody."
Kathy Jansen, vice president of Classified Senate and a procurement officer who's worked at KU for 26 years, served on the taskforce. She agreed that employees don't trust supervisors to give fair raises and evaluations.
"Our system now is called a merit-based pay system, but in reality it's not," Jansen said.
Either everyone is funded a step-increase by the legislature or everyone is denied. She said employees wanted it to stay this way.
"We've existed for a long time in a system with equality if nothing else." Jansen said.
But Constance maintains that the system needs fixing.
"Life is more than a roof over your head, food to eat and clothes on your back," he said. "Most people live for something. You need to be able to go beyond basic expenses to give your life real value and purpose and meaning."
he taught her about when she grows up and goes to college, not about when she grows up and gets married." Sexton said. "Her dad wanted her to play volleyball here at KU. I want her to have a career."
For Cindy Sexton, the meaning in her life is providing a future for her daughter. Chelsea.
Neal also wants his three children to have careers and a better education than his high-school diploma.
In addition to a better life for his kids, Neal has another dream. He wants to be a student in the same classrooms that he cleans in the Art and Design Building. As he pushes his broom every day, he peruses the sketches along the walls drawn by art majors and years to be one of them.
"I just want the privilege to have my drawings up there," Neal said. "I don't want to be a custodian all my life. I'm just doing this because I need a job."
Neal spends work breaks inside his janitor's closet, where among the rags, brooms and mops are instructional books on art. Beside his chair is a portfolio case with collections of sketches. In that closet, with a sketch pad propped against his thigh and drawing pencil in hand, Neal may be as close to his dream as he will ever afford.
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