Recognize the Worth of State Employees

We have been hearing a lot about the salaries of state employees from Governor Rowland recently. Our representatives in the legislature have been rather too quiet on the matter. Recently, attacks on the salaries of college professors seem to be succeeding. After all, don't professors work mostly at home, where their students can never find them, tossing papers down stairs to determine grades rather than carefully constructing thoughtful comments? Don't professors live in ivory towers? Why should we feel sympathy for them?

In fact, you shouldn't feel sympathy. As a college professor, I am not writing to gain pity, but as a citizen of Torrington and the state of Connecticut, I am your neighbor. What I really do is probably pretty mysterious in some ways. I write articles on Puritans, Indians, Poles, and African-American servants; teach four classes a semester (70 students this semester alone); meet with those 70 students and former students; help students go on to graduate school or get jobs (I just finished sending in approximately 30 letters of recommendation for students in the last week); attend professional conferences; serve on committees at the university; and help various community organizations build their own histories. But it all boils down to one thing: I serve my students and the community.

No state employee is overpaid, including college professors. State employees are civil servants. Each gives up something to do the job he or she is paid for. Police officers give up safety, the most difficult of sacrifices. College professors, who are privileged to teach and research, give up years to study to prepare for their jobs—years in which they are not earning any money to help save for a house or college educations for their own children. The starting salary of someone who has studied for approximately seven post-university years and teaches college is a whopping $43,000 on average.

In my case, I have a Ph.D. and a J.D. from private universities that I paid for myself, supplementing fellowships with loans. It took me ten years after college to do all that, and before I took my first job as a professor I never earned more than $5 an hour. I have the equivalent of a mortgage on myself, but I consider it worth it to have the kind of job I do. I spend about 60 or 70 hours a week doing it in an office the size of a refrigerator box. I struggle to pay bills like other working people, and cutbacks in my health benefits and pension or rollbacks on my salary would affect me as much as it would any other working person.

Does this mean my colleagues and I are unwilling to help the state out of its fiscal crisis? No. SEBAC has proposed a plan that would cut back our health benefits, introduce furloughs to save money, and many other things, with one stipulation: that no employees be laid off. There are over 50,000 state employees. I am not sure how many the governor would like to get rid of, but that seems like a fair number of taxpayers to sock it to. If I have to give up $249,000 over my working life for this bailout (and who says there won't be more?), then I would like the promise that no one would have to lose his or her job right now, especially as it seems our governor has given little thought as to how to save or make money without cutting jobs.

State employees are not the enemy of working taxpayers in the state. We are working taxpayers of the state, and the state would not run without us. The services provided by state employees are necessary ones, including the services provided by college professors. Education is one of the most important aspects of a person's life, and it is a necessary part of anyone's life in the 21st century.

My dad was a policeman who earned $15,000 a year when he retired in 1977. When I decided to go into public service instead of working in a law firm, I knew what I was doing. I was exchanging financial gain for something I love and feel a duty to do. The governor ought to recognize the worth of his employees and stop "spinning" us into greedy, overpaid, underworked leeches. We are hardworking, dedicated civil servants.

Katherine A. Hermes is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Central CT State University in New Britain.