Louisiana’s civil service agency is pushing a $46 million plan to boost pay and rework salary scales for rank-and-file state workers, hoping to shrink turnover rates and agency costs associated with lost employees.
The Associated Press reports the proposal would include an across-the-board 2% pay hike for more than 38,000 state government workers and adjust the minimum salary ranges for jobs. In exchange, the annual 4% pay raises allowed for workers with positive performance evaluations would be discarded for a different type of sliding scale pay increase system.
Byron Decoteau, Louisiana’s civil service director, says high turnover rates cost agencies millions in lost productivity. The turnover rate in state government was 17% last year, according to civil service data that estimated the turnover carried an annual cost of $114 million.
“We want to move to a structure that is more market-competitive,” Decoteau says.
Particularly hard-hit are the corrections, juvenile justice and child welfare agencies, which are having trouble hanging onto front-line workers because of low pay for jobs with hazardous conditions. Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc told the House budget committee that he loses so many correctional officers each year that it creates regular staffing problems for him.
The pay changes would affect classified state workers governed by civil service, not the thousands of political appointees across agencies known as unclassified employees who tend to receive higher salaries than their classified counterparts.
The proposal’s price tag, however, is a tough ask as Louisiana continues grappling with budget gaps. Republican lawmakers have pushed back against the idea of any raises right now.
