Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and the legislators should find money wherever they can to give state employees a raise, the employees' union leader said Wednesday.
Brenda Scott, president of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, spoke to the Greenwood Voters League.
Scott said employees should receive a "decent across-the-board raise" in the range of $1,500 to $2,400 a year. They have not received pay increases the last three years.
She called for the state to use money from the tobacco settlements to fund the increases if necessary. The state won this money and should use it for the people's benefit, she said.
Scott said many people don't realize all the important work that state employees do. They help provide health care, transportation, food stamps and other essential services, she said.
However, she said, morale is low because of low pay and a stressful environment.
Six thousand state jobs are vacant, and other jobs are being filled by people with little experience, she said.
Scott urged her listeners to approach their elected officials wherever they see them if they have questions or complaints. If the leaders don't follow their constituents' wishes, they should be voted out, she said.
She praised state Sen. David Jordan, president of the Voters League, for his support of employees but told the audience: "You hired Senator Jordan; you can fire Senator Jordan."
The workers encounter resistants from legislators in both parties from all parts of the state, Scott said.
She also called the legislature "the best government money can buy" because of the influence of lobbyists. But any citizen can lobby for a cause, she said.
Teachers received raises because they worked together, and the other state employees can do the same by speaking up whenever possible, Scott said.
"We don't have a lot of people, but we're loud and we're out there," she said.
The state also needs a Department of Labor to provide a central place for workers to get answers to questions, Scott said.
Jordan, a member of the state Senate's Labor Committee, said he has always spoken up for workers.
He and others on the committee have proposed a Department of Labor, but their proposal never got out of committee, he said.
Jordan said he would like for the state employees to have a plan that raises pay a certain percentage each year for a few years, as the teachers have.
"We want to be just as fair to state employees as we are to teachers," he said.
American workers are suffering, and pay that is barely above minimum wage doesn't help, he said.
