State employees should vote 'yes'

The Concord Monitor urges state employees to buck their union leadership and approve the pending state contract.

The contract is not a great one. It requires that workers take 19 days of furlough over two years in exchange for an equivalent amount of additional vacation time in the following two years. That translates into a temporary 3.5 percent pay cut, but unlike most workers in the private sector, state employees got a 5.5 percent pay increase in January and a 3.5 percent increase the previous year. Many also got step increases - regular pay hikes for longevity that rarely exist outside the public sector. The situation in most states is worse than in New Hampshire, and mass layoffs have become commonplace in the public and in the private sector. So have wage freezes, mandatory furloughs, increased employee health insurance contributions and curtailed company retirement contributions.