you said the empire sliders work correctly now.

Which where the changes you introduced? Please repeat, cause i'm not sure if you refer to the wages problem.

Thanx,

UNIT_WORKDAY 0.2 # slider to work
BASE_WORKDAY 1.0 # work per person when slider is zero
UNIT_WAGES 4.0 # what does 1 notch mean
BASE_WAGES 12.0 # gold per person when slider is zero
UNIT_RATIONS 2.0 # what does 1 notch mean
BASE_RATIONS 6.0 # food per person time POP_HUNGER when slider is zero

If you will notice, the unit workday slider works differently than the ones for wages and rations. The unit workday setting is the percentage of the expected workday added or subtracted when the slider is moved. The expected workday is set to 10 hours, so setting the unit workday to .2 causes it to moves two hours per notch.
The comment "when slider is zero" refers to the center position on the bar, and correlates to flags in the govern.txt which affect expected rations and wages for the respective government types.