How does Mecklenburg County set worker pay?

County Manager Harry Jones recently said his recommended budget would include no pay raises for county workers for the second year in a row. But last June, county commissioners agreed to spend $1 million on raises in 2009-10 for workers whose pay was below the market rate.

As a story in Sunday's Observer noted, those market raises were the primary reason about 1,200 county workers saw their pay go up in the past year. Other reasons for raises include promotions or previously approved merit increases.

State law makes public the pay of workers at tax-funded institutions, and each spring the Observer publishes the salaries of city, county and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools employees. You can view those at www.charlotteobserver.com/data.

To coincide with the Observer publication of county salaries this year, staff recently posted an explanation for how salaries are set on The MecklenBlog, a web site maintained by the county.

One entry -- which you can read by clicking here -- says "experience, expertise, performance and comparisons against salaries provided for similar jobs in the market" are among the factors the county considers when setting employee pay. It also spells out four ways workers’ pay can be raised: promotion, merit-based increase, position reclassification or for market parity.

"Employee compensation is a vital tool we use to recruit and retain a qualified and diverse work force to serve our diverse community," the blog says. "We also recognize the importance of being good public stewards in setting pay and providing pay increases. Therefore, we use the best data available to make fair and competitive compensation decisions." -- April Bethea