Jim Hard, President of SEIU Local 1000 submitted his response to the Bee, which you can find here. I've posted part of it below...


The Bee's new searchable database on state employee salaries may be fun for gossipers and helpful to stalkers, but it does very little to advance the policy discussion about public employee salaries.

The database has undeniable attraction. If you know the last name of a state employee, within seconds you can find out how much that person is paid along with job title and agency. That's all it takes to find the salary of your neighbor, your daughter's boyfriend or the cute guy you met at the party last weekend.

But beyond its gossip value, the database provides little meaningful information about state services – and it could lead to some serious harm for workers.

So far more than 500 of our members have complained to us about the database compared to about 25 who support releasing the information.