For the govt workers you can set the target salary or have the game move it up or down depending on the financial situation of your country. You have to click the tab to update salaries automatically. Once you try to set the target salary yourself, the game will no longer do it for you. You must once again click the update salaries automatically again.
As far as your state corps go, you can only set the target salary yourself. Thats why I have only a few state corps and the rest are ceo controlled corps. The ceo's set the salary target themselves plus they are a whole lot more profitable.
Hope this helped