Walker: No Pay Raises for State Employees

Well, it can't be said that Walker is faint of heart.

Wisconsin state workers will get no salary increases during the next two years under the first pay plan put forward by Gov. Scott Walker's administration after passage of a law no longer requiring negotiations with unions over the deal.

One suspects that the principal reason for this is that the Administration is not optimistic about the State's revenues over the biennium.  Another component may be the realization that some State employees--unhappy about this--will leave for other opportunities, which will reduce the State's headcount and/or its gross payroll numbers.

Here's a part that I do NOT like:

...In addition to no pay increases over the next two years, the plan released Tuesday also removes the ability of separate state agencies to give merit raises and places it instead with the Office of State Employment Relations.

That means that exceptionally-good employees of (say) DMV cannot be rewarded by their superiors unless Employee Relations stamps "approved" on the request.  Again, the Principle of Subsidiarity is violated.  I understand that Walker wants to contain payroll expense; but perhaps a better methodology would be to allow each Department a global-comp figure and let the Departments figure out who gets rewarded.

HT: Patrick