Bevin Gives Raises to Engineers; Ignores Minimum-Wage Workers

All state employees deserve raises; they've been denied their statutory raises since 2002.  But to reward just one group at the expense of everyone else is outrageous.

Especially since the rewarded group just happens to be whiter and more male than the lowest-paid group.

A Transportation Engineering Tech II start at $18.07 per hour ($36,000 per year).  A Tech III starts at $19.88 ($39,500 per year).  According to Bevin, those people need a $3.20 per hour raise, but the very lowest paid state employees, the ones making the state minimum wage of $7.25, not only do not get a raise of a single penny per hour, but also no longer can get the raise to $10.10 per hour that Gov. Beshear gave those workers in the summer of 2015.

Those would be the people who do the dirtiest work in the state, cleaning park resort rooms and washing dishes in park resort restaurants and bathing the veterans in state veterans homes.

Because Bevin doesn't give a shit about those - well, I doubt he thinks of them as "people."  Just "the help."  Not worthy of notice, much less a living wage.
 

From the press release: 0 Transportation Cabinet employees to receive salary adjustment

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Oct. 31, 2016) - Flanked by a platoon of statewide highway maintenance crews dressed in high-visibility gear, Gov. Matt Bevin today fulfilled his promise to increase the pay of over 2,600 Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) employees. The new salary adjustment will affect specialized maintenance job classifications including highway equipment operators, laborers, mechanics, machinists and welders, as well as engineering technologists.  Employees, depending on their classification, could see a salary increase of up to $3.20 per hour by Jan. 2017. “Whenever Kentucky's roadways are affected by weather, accidents or maintenance, it directly impacts the safety and well-being of all Kentuckians,” said Gov. Bevin. “Not often enough do we take time to thank the men and women who ensure that, both day and night, the rest of us to have clear and safe paths to work, school and elsewhere. This salary adjustment is long-overdue, and I hope will show at least a small measure of the gratitude we feel for the hard-working Transportation Cabinet employees who risk their own safety on our behalf throughout the year.”