By Katherine Gregg

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – President Obama is proposing to freeze the pay of federal employees for the next two years, but there is no such effort to freeze the wages of the thousands of state workers who are slated to get a 3 percent across-the-board raise on January 2 and another 3 percent raise in mid-June.

The January raise, originally scheduled for July 2010, was delayed for six months as part of a deal that Republican Governor Carcieri struck with the major state employee unions last fall to save an estimated $36 million over his final 15 months in office.

As part of a compromise aimed at averting the widespread layoffs threatened by Carcieri, the state’s major unions also agreed to a series of unpaid work days, for which their members could be compensated later in either cash or extra paid days off.

The last four of these deferred pay days are scheduled for the second half of the current budget year that began on July 1, according to Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe.

The state budget office has calculated that the first of the two raises, in January, will cost an extra $12,051,000 this year in state and federal dollars, and add a total of $24.5 million to the state’s personnel costs next year when the state is facing a projected deficit of at least $295 million.

And that does not count the automatic longevity bonuses that state employees get as they reach benchmarks in their career, such as a 10-year or 15-year mark.

Asked where Carcieri stood on the need to freeze state employee wages at a time when the president is seeking a pay freeze at the federal level, and private employers in Rhode Island are still asking their employees to take pay cuts, spokeswoman Amy Kempe said: “Any further reduction in pay or wage freezes would need to be negotiated by the labor unions and the Chafee administration.

“However, the Chafee administration could impose pay freezes (or other measures) on non-union employees within the executive branch, although it has been policy for non-union and union employees to receive the same wage/benefit structure.”

There has been no immediate response from Governor-elect Chafee’s transition office.

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