KUMC employs gain $27 a month
Wage bill increased
KANSAS CITY Non-professional employees at the University of Kansas Medical Center will get a $27 a month pay raise in addition to the 5 per cent increase submitted by the Governor to the legislature in his Feb.4 budget message.
Gov. Robert B. Docking, Senate President pro tem Glee S. Smith Jr., R-Larned, and speaker of the house, Rep. Calvin Strowig, R-Abilene, announced jointly yesterday the salary increase for about 19,000 classified and classified-exempt state Civil Service employees.
The joint recommendation was slipped into the budget with the earlier 5 per cent raise and hospitalization provision, and will not have to be put to a floor vote said Rep. Reynolds Shultz, R-Lawrence. The increase will be effective July 1.
Docking said the extra money will be gained through removal of sales tax exemptions for purchases made by religious, benevolent and charitable organizations and through inclusion of a tobacco products tax on cigars, pipe tobacco,
snuff and other tobacco products, not including cigarettes.
The $27 a month increase is expected to cost $6.8 million, he said, but the removal of the sales tax exemptions will bring about $3 million and the tobacco products will gather some $2 million. The remainder will come from the general revenue fund.
Docking, Strowig and Smith said the plan had been formulated over the past several months through coordinated planning and discussions.
however, the reform measures would satisfy many of the desires of the Medical Center employes.
Public service employees, local 1132 which includes 566 of the more than one thousand non-professional employees at the Medical Center were on strike March 9-12.
The pay boost will increase the beginning wage for state employees from the current $1.38 an hour to the federal minimum wage of $1.60 an hour. The state would have had to increase this minimum by February, 1971, under federal law.
Docking said, "at the bottom step in salary classifications the combined increase will total 20 per cent. The increase is necessary to provide what is a fair wage to our state employees and to allow the state to compete in the labor market."
Beginning wages in practically all metropolitan hospitals are $2.35 an hour with a top of $3.00 an hour compared to $1.38 an hour with a top of $1.76 an hour for Medical Center employees, a union spokesman said.
Milton H. Bledsoe, president and board chairman of Local 1132, gave this formal statement for publication:
"We, the executive board of Public Service Employees Local 1132 feel that the proposed bill increasing salaries of 19,000 workers including those of the University of Kansas Medical Center, is a start toward parity of pay for Medical Center personnel with the other metropolitan area hospitals.
Community service given by senior law students
The tax reforms will be inserted by amending bills already before the house and senate.
Selected senior law students are participating in the Law School's continuing clinical programs, said Lawrence Blades, dean of the law school.
Docking said the action was not taken in response to the recent strike of non-professional employees at the Medical Center.
The programs, offered every semester, enable students to gain insights into the practice of law and perform community service, Blades said.
"We are grateful to all who supported our endeavors to get increased salaries for Medical Center people."
With the support of the National Defender Project and the Office of Economic Opportunity, Blades said the following clinics are offered to sixty senior students for one credit hour per semester.
There are three clinics dealing with aid to the indigent.
Students participating in a criminal advocacy clinic assist
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The Governor said he hoped.
assigned counsel in the defense of indigent persons accused of crime in the courts of Wvandotte County, he said.
Students also work in the neighborhood law offices in Kansas City, under the direction of the Wyandotte County Legal Aid Society, which operated under the auspices of the Office of Economic Opportunity Legal Services Program.
Blades also said some students are enrolled in the clinic in community planning and must take a course in Urban Planning and Community Development. These students assist neighborhood groups in Kansas City and other cities. This helps the redevelopment functions such as construction of new homes, low-rent housing and other community facilities Blades explained.
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