As many of you may know, there have been recent talks about changes to the Mississippi Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi and the Cost of Living Adjustment payments from the Social Security Administration, which include a cost of living increase each year and are issued to retired state employees.
Here is a copy of one of the COLA statements that a retired Mississippi Highway Patrolman received in 2021/2022 and has received yearly since his retirement decades ago, in addition to this, he receives another COLA supplemental payment for his time spent working for the state auditors office, a disability income and three state retirements through the PERS program, including compensation for his time served in the Mississippi national guard.
Each beneficiary who receives the COLA check has the option of choosing whether they want that payment disbursed over the course of the year in monthly payments or receive it all at once in a lump sum in December. It is commonly referred to as the "13th check" for those who opt to receive it all at once.
I never really knew how fortunate I was to have parents with these benefits until I became an adult myself and a working professional trying to make ends meet in today’s world. Raising one child, much less more than one, in a time like today is extremely challenging, not only because of the cost of living but because we live in a world that in general is not as safe as it once was.
Opportunity is not as abundant as it once was, either, despite technology and productivity being the best it has ever been. We also do not see many employers in the private sector or public sector offering 3-percent cost of living raises to their employees, no matter what, year after year.
Whoever designed this retirement system in Mississippi certainly had good intentions and they made sure to look out for those who worked under the state at the time, ensuring that they would forever receive the benefits of that career. This 13th check alone, which comes to a gross amount of roughly $28,000 give or take, is compensation for work done decades ago and it is still more money than a lot of middle-class Americans earn in a year working a full-time job in the year 2023.
That all depends on if they get hired for a fairly decent rate and not the minimum wage, which is $7.25 per hour. In most careers that require a college degree, the income starts out at maybe $15 an hour (sometimes less) and you are lucky if you reach $20-$25 an hour in your lifetime.
Our first-year teachers, for example, bring home an average salary that is slightly more than this 13th check and they have to fight tooth and nail to earn more than that throughout their career.
The job this person did for our state offices as a highway patrolman was commendable and respectable, certainly. It did not, however, require a college degree. Neither did the job that he had for the state auditor’s office, nor did he have to earn a college degree to be in the National Guard.
Yet he made as much, if not more, money, from just this one of many retirement/social security incomes than many of us working in the world today who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. Not to mention the fact that without having to get a college education, you are by default less likely to fall into debt at a young age and stay in debt for the rest of your life, so that is certainly an advantage.
In my personal experience, I have never been given a true opportunity to receive benefits like these, and maybe that is because I chose the wrong career path early on, or maybe it is because I didn't stay with certain positions that I should have, or maybe it is just because the world has changed rapidly over the past 15-30 years, and so much so, that anyone trying to navigate that world as a young adult, mother/father and/or spouse is never even guaranteed an opportunity at all, much less one that affords these lifelong benefits long after the job is done.
Many industries these days are opting out of full-time hiring with benefits and instead offering part-time positions without benefits, or they hire full-time employees using a "temp agency" or "employment agency". In that case, these companies typically pay that agency an amount of money for finding the candidate, and then the agency pays the candidate their income.
So, for example, if I were to go through a temp agency to find work and the company that they pair me with has a position available that will pay $15 an hour, typically the agency will receive a portion of that wage. Let’s just say $5 of that $15 an hour for the work I do, and the remaining $10 will go to pay the actual employee.
They call this the “cost of service” for finding the candidate and for bringing in people willing to work whenever they need them and rotating them out sometimes after only 6 weeks or 6 months of work. I can remember my experience working for a temp agency.
It was a contract that I took through Manpower to work for Regions Mortgage – a bank, of all places, but not just any bank. Regions is one of the largest mortgage lenders in the country. In 2013 when I worked there, the call center, which covers all 16 states that Regions services was ranked no.2 by J.D. Power associates for customer satisfaction.
Regions Mortgage to this day has still operates one of their largest call centers in the greater Hattiesburg area. Many other major industries locate here for similar reasons, the main one being our abundant workforce, which leads to constant options in terms of labor. Additional reasons include close access to rail, port, major highways and interstates and our airports. They don't call us the Hub City for no reason.
The temp agency that I worked for made me sign a contract for a six-month stint of work where I would work at Regions Mortgage and receive $11 an hour with no benefits and Manpower received a portion per hour for the work that I did during those six months. The deal was, if I performed well during those six months, I would be able to negotiate an offer to become a full-time, "real" Regions Mortgage employee with benefits and a higher rate of pay.
I loved that job. I was good at it, too.
Production sales associate was my title and my mortgage loan originator that I assisted was the floor manager and one of the top five in charge at the entire call center.
Each PSA was paired with a mortgage loan originator and the job consisted of doing every bit of the leg work for collecting paperwork and income statements and other required documentation for mortgages. I would communicate with borrowers from start to finish on their loan and then I would pass those documents on to the processing department, where they would do their part in verifying the information.
After that, it would be passed to closing and an underwriter, and title workers and appraisers were also involved in the process, all under one roof – a nine-story call center in the center of downtown Hattiesburg. That call center has since been relocated to west Hattiesburg after an expansion project and the new headquarters went live in 2019. The year that I took that position, right at the end of my six months of work, the call center was noticed for being a lead producer and for customer satisfaction in the entire Regions Mortgage company, and corporate came to town to set up a PR stunt to run in the news on that accomplishment.
We were all invited to a wonderful lunch in the break room, then we all walked downtown to the Hattiesburg Train Depot, where we posed in front of that big green bike that they take from town to town when doing PR engagements. Just a few days prior to that event, I met with my direct supervisor, who was also the MLO that I worked alongside and directly assisted with the production of loans.
Cayla Camp Burns posing with the infamous gigantic green Regions bicycle in Downtown Hattiesburg, 2013.
He gave me the recommendation needed for Regions to approve for me to be hired on as a full-time Regions employee with benefits. He himself was a Regions employee and many of the other employees at that call center were, too. But there was also a fair share like me, who were there to do a temp job and may or may not be there in six months, depending on their performance.
I remember the office manager who was in charge of sending all of the paperwork for my contract getting with me to fill that out, and she told me when she sent it over to the headquarters. That was the point when I actually exhaled a breath of relief, and I believed that it was really happening.
Before that, I was afraid to get my hopes up, but once papers were pushed I thought surely it was a done deal. On that same day, based on that paperwork and that agreement, I signed a lease to move in with a co-worker using my income that I was sure would be there for the foreseeable future.
Boy, was I wrong.
Corporate came to town to announce the accomplishments that I mentioned earlier and at the very same time, behind closed doors, they also announced (or privately discussed with upper management at the CRA) a nationwide hiring freeze, which resulted in my contract being terminated right then and there, along with anyone else who was set to become a Regions employee. From then on out, it was only temp work, and I’m not even sure if they continued hiring for that at the time.
On the very day that my six months of temp work was complete and the day that I was to officially gain my credentials as a Regions Mortgage employee, I was told to pack up my desk and that my job there was done. I don't really know what led to that hiring freeze.
I didn't understand how that worked at the time, but this was in 2013 and I remember being devastated and disappointed. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to rebound fairly quickly when I called one of my former bosses who I had worked for during one of my many stints at Forrest County.
There again, I was offered another contract job that would have me working the duties of a clerk, handling the files, minutes and cases that were stored in the chancery court building and circuit court. But I was not offered an actual position as a clerk for the county, where I could receive PERS and benefits like the ones you see here.
In fact, the only time I ever had a direct job for the county that would have potentially afforded me those benefits was when I was in college, and that was a part-time job as a clerk in mapping for the tax assessor’s office. I did not qualify for benefits then because of that part-time status.
When I worked that job, it was before minimum wage was raised to $7.25 an hour. I can remember the day that David Hogan, president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors, called my office line to inform me that the board had passed a vote to increase my pay in 2009.
That was the last time that minimum wage was increased, and it has not budged a bit since then.
Going back to that contract for the county, I went back to making minimum wage as a college graduate with skills and a great resume - I had to do what I had to do. It still wasn't enough to afford the rent for the lease I just signed, so I was forced to move out of that house and move into an apartment, where I shared a two-bedroom duplex with an engaged couple.
The rent was still barely affordable, considering the work I was doing was not always 40-hour weeks, and I was making no more than $7.25 an hour. I was not even paid as much as I was making as a college student for the county five years prior, despite my credentials, experience and education.
That contract job that I took for the county was yet another example of how the world has changed in regard to employment and benefits and pay. Rather than the county just hiring me or anyone else outright to do that job that I did in their basement at chancery court, I was outsourced through a third party who was awarded a contract with the county through a bidding process.
That company was hired for somewhere between $60,000-$70,000 to completely digitize the backlog of county records, and those of us who worked the contract were held to extremely tight standards, where we had to scan a certain number of pages per hour or to meet deadline. If we happened to surpass that number, then and only then would we be eligible for bonus pay.
I can remember sitting in my office chair for hours on end without even taking a break to use the restroom or eat, while I perfected my technique, memorized key strokes and used muscle memory to input that data as quickly as possible while also avoiding any mistakes because that was definitely not allowed. Could you imagine a page of your deed being misplaced or skipped over? Or a custody case being digitized without all of the documents in that file scanned?
We had to be efficient with the least amount of error possible and there was no compromising that. The job was not just simply feeding paper into a machine – it involved indexing, inputting proper codes, making sure the records were scanned into the right case file so that the public and county employees and officials could access those records using the county board minutes archives or other systems, with ease and just the click of a button. To this day, the reason that I am able to provide this contract for reference is in part due to the job that I did in that basement years ago.
I had to become efficient in AS400, which is the software that the county used then and has used for 30 years now. Luckily, I was already well-versed in that software because of the work that I did years prior for Mary Ann Palmer in the tax assessor’s office.
All of this to say, when I hear discussions about how we might have to halt the increase on COLA payments and I speak with beneficiaries of that COLA check, who complain about how this is the second or third time in decades that they have had to go without their cost of living raise, it takes everything that I have in me to not jump all over them, with these very examples of how I, too, have worked for the counties and the state (I was a case manager for Forrest County, which is a hybrid between county and the state).
I, too, have put in my time and energy for more than 15 consecutive years now as an employee of some sort – through various companies from big banks to little startups – and at 35 years old I will likely never see the day where I can afford the right to complain about a bonus check of $28,000 that I receive on top of multiple other pensions, social security, disability, and other checks. I know that some people will never quite understand what this world is like now because all they know is what they experienced and that is no one’s fault.
Those people who have been lucky enough to get something out of their hard work deserve that – everyone deserves that chance in life. Even my father, who went to work straight out of high school with no college degree, was fortunate because of the work that his father did in the field of natural gas, so he was able to land a job in that same field at age 17.
Fifty years later, he still works in that field, and he will retire soon with the satisfaction of knowing that he spent his life devoted to a career that served him well and provided for his family and afforded him the nicer things in life. He was able to send his kids to college, build the home of his dreams and secure a few acres of land to hand down some day.
We were able to go on trips to Disneyworld, to the beach. We were a part of the show choirs, football teams, softball teams, soccer teams, dance teams and whatever else we wanted to be a part of.
He might have started off making $5 an hour, but heck, so did I. The difference here is that the companies that our fathers and mothers and grandparents worked for understood the concept of hard work and they understand how to take care of their employees and how to create company morale that generates positive gains for everyone, not just those few at the top.
There are companies around today that know how to do this, too, but they are few and far between. One of the local ones that always comes to mind as an example of this is Verge Entrance Solutions.
They have an impressive company model, and you can tell just by watching what they do that they value the work that their employees do for them, and therefore they award those employees with benefits as a result of that work.
On the other hand, we understand that there are many employers, both in the private sector and the public sector, who do not do this. There are companies who relocate their entire headquarters, call centers and manufacturing warehouses to places like Greater Hattiesburg, to take advantage of the young, talented, motivated workforce that we have here, and they use a third party to do that most of the time. On the contrary, there are employers who operate on a skeleton crew of just a handful of super effecient employees, so that they can earn more profit while paying out less in personnel and salaries.
Sure, there are people who end up as a direct hire and with a longterm career but most of the jobs created from those industries are indirect and induced. This is why you hear stories about 16-year-old Guatemalan immigrants working sanitation at poultry processing plants who die tragic deaths on the job because of a lack of company oversight and lack of morale, a lack of character.
Most of the time, those companies are hardly even punished for those fatalities. They just call it the “cost of doing business” and go on about their day.
Meanwhile, our generation struggles to find its place in a world that should have everything to offer. Instead, we are met with another increase in taxes to cover the unbudgeted cost-of-living raise that the state needs to pay out to those employees who came before us who are receiving multiple retirements and lump-sum supplemental payments each year, which amount to as much if not more than many of us in the working class make in a year of full-time work.
This PERS discussion is a very serious one. If we do not begin to address some of these problems in government, we will continue to pay the price for sleeping on the job, as a citizen.
We, as voters – and especially as young adults – have to take control of the cart here and begin to find our way in this world. Those who came before us are not always going to be there to solve these problems for us.
Clearly, many of them checked out a long time ago and haven't really looked back since, resulting in our government in some cases falling into such a state that they cannot even provide the public with clean drinking water in capitol cities like Jackson. Now they are seeing these truths affect them in a real way, like the threat of losing their cost of living raise.
Someone, somewhere along the way, fell asleep at the wheel and it is our job to wake them up and tell them to move over so we can drive. If we do not figure out a solution to the increase in PERS payments, our counties, cities and schools will be forced to increase our taxes, and no one wants for that to happen.
Something has to account for this money, and someone has to pay out the benefits that those retirees are earning and have been earning for some time now. Yes, they are taxpayers too - but if you are over 65 you receive a significant tax exemption.
So in the event that taxes go up, who do you think that will affect the most? The you and the me of our society.
We will be taxed more to pay for those benefits while likely never earning a seat at the same table that affords us those same benefits someday. Think about that for a minute and ask yourself if you think there is a better way to go about this problem.
Get involved. Share your thoughts. Become an active member of society, and for God’s sake get out and vote. You can start by going to the polls on November 7th for the general election where you will have the opportuniy to vote on state wide representatives, down to the county supervisors and other county wide offices.
These things I am referring to are a direct result of the things that people put into play years ago to ensure that they would come out ahead someday. How are you and I going to ensure that we come out on top, too? Or are you okay with settling at the bottom? I know I'm not.
So let's do something about it.
