I work for a State Government, doing acquisition of property for public projects. We essentially get assigned "parcels", and have what is referred to as a LET date, where we need to acquire everything. Each one of us is paid the same (extremely low market rate) salary, and I've been here 4 years, 2 years less than one coworker, and 1.5 years more than the other. I'm the youngest in the office by 15 years.
Basically, my boss has this history of assigning me twice the number of parcels as the other two (current project is 60, versus 32 and 24). It's nothing against them, but I get hit harder than anyone else (as well as having several other obligations that the other coworkers don't have, and prefer not to do). I can't get a raise because they basically have frozen our salaries except for across the board raises that come from the Legislature. In the 4 years I've been here, my salary has only gone up 8.5%, and 5% of that was just in November when a salary study showed we lagged behind 20% other localities starting salaries. Now, it turns out a Utility company flubbed the plans, and I'm having to go back and redo 25% of my workload (mine were the only ones affected), and am being asked to do it in 2 months. My boss won't give some of them to the other two. We're supposed to have 2 years to complete a project, we only had 1 year to complete this one, and now I'm being required to redo a huge portion of my work with land owners that are already a little irritated at me. I bust my butt to do right by the property owners, but because of the position I'm put in, I understand 100% them not always being "fond" of me.
I've been really tempted to tell my boss where to go with this, but I want to be professional. I have also taken it upon myself to make my coworkers feel appreciated in little ways, since our management and boss doesn't seem to get the hint that it's their responsibility. I had talked to him briefly about the unevenness, and he said, "Life's not fair, Rob." We also work in a filthy, roach infested building, because the state saw they could save some money by selling the old place and moving us to an old oil building. I've literally had a roach crawl into my underwear while sitting on the toilet.
So, while tempted to be immature and unprofessional towards him, or aching to be passive aggressive, I know that's not the answer. How should I handle approaching this? I'm trying to get out of here and find another job (and get back to my home state), but I keep running into roadblocks.