Yes, it is a token gesture on Obama's part, driven, in my opinion, by the election results. Republicans, predictably, are howling about Federal pay. What they don't say, naturally, is that the bulk of Federal pay increases during the last decade came during a Republican administration and a Republican controlled Congress. In other words, they are doing the usual, "Do as we say, not as we've done" crap again. Blaming Democrats for what they did themselves, and their supporters, equally predictably, ignore that salient fact. So, of course, as you point out, the middle class gets it in the ass yet again.
You get 4 hours of leave for every 2 weeks worked during your first 3 years. From 3-15 years of service, you get 6 hours for every two weeks worked. From 15 on, you get 8. The usual joke is that they should be reversed because when you're young and raising a family, you need lots of time and when you're old you don't need as much. Anyway, I'm now at 8, which means 208 hours each year. You're allowed to carry over up to 240 hours, so that's what most people do... keep 240 in the bank in case of emergency and use what you get during the year. So, for me I always end up having to take 2-4 weeks off at the end of the year because it's tough to take it during the summer. (The last several years I've also donated a bunch of hours to coworkers who need it because of personal or family illness.) Beyond that, we get all the Federal holidays, though it's rare I don't work at least two of Memorial Day, July 4, and Labor Day. For sick leave, you get 4 hours for every 2 weeks worked and there's no limit on the amount you can accrue. I've seen people retire with close to 2000 sick leave hours. You get roughly 1% of the average of your three highest years of pay for each year of service. So, let's say my highest three years of pay averaged $80k and I retired after 30 years. That means 800 x 30 =$24,000 per year. (We have a Federal equivalent to a 401K where both you and the Govt contribute... this was designed in the 1980's so there wouldn't be such a reliance on pure pensions... and we'll also get SS at some point.) I think you can get a fraction after you work for 10 years, but I'm not sure on that one. No, we don't have pensions quite like that. The big perk for me is that if I need to take time off for the family, I usually can.
I should note that this saves nothing immediately as agencies have traditionally been required to absorb these increases out of their appropriated budget.
Hey, knock it off. I'm wasting my tax dollars as well. Besides, why don't you get to work in the private sector and get this economy going? (Not the case most of the time, but I took off this morning to do some stuff around the house... so naturally, I'm posting here.)
thanks for implicitly acknowledging that government should keep its hands off the economy, since there's nothing "productive" they can do with it.
What I clearly implied is that private industry should quit sitting on the bailout money, start hiring people at good wages, and work towards building an economy that is based on production instead of fee-skimming.
More data points... So, we now have fewer Federal employees than we had in 1970, even with the growth in Homeland Security. For comparison's sake, the population of the US in 1970 was 203 million while today it is 310 million. Heck, we only have 400,000 more than 1960 (US pop = 179 million), which is before the Great Society programs. Of course, the number of government contractors has increased exponentially since the 1970's and the money spent on contractors doubled during the Bush years to over $400 billion. Now that's a number that does make more than a token difference in the budget calculations... Here's the conclusion of a recent Rand study...
RimRocker, great posts. I'm also a Fed (disclosure). I'll comment on the things I found interesting, as RimRocker has already posted plenty of good info. It depends on who is getting denied. For a person in their 30's like myself, not really. For a person that was planning to retire in the next two years, yupper. Pensions are based on an average of your highest salaries, so freezing a soon to be retiree for 2 years can impact how much they get for the remainder of their lives. I'm not arguing that it's earth shattering, but someone who started before 1984 could possibly get's 80% of their salary as a pension, so no raise for 2 years could cost them around $1,000 a year for the remainder of their lives. That's why the proposal mentions the immediate savings and the future savings due to pensions being lower. And folks don't realize that the majority of fed workers are closer to the can retire age than they are to my age (they don't have to wait until the early 60's to retire if they have enough years of service). I have been with the govt for around 1.5 yrs, and I bs you not....there has been an average of 1 person retiring per week since I've been here. I promise you that more people will retire now as they have no incentive to stay (assuming they were going to within the next 2 years). That's some serious brain drain and expect a lower level of service. It can be depending on how many people retire, and the only reason I mention that is because govt wages are already lower than the private sector to begin with (especially for those with experience in their field). It's hard enough to convince folks from the outside to take the normal paycut....good luck getting folks now that salaries are frozen. No, but I think less people will come over from the private sector. As far as fed benefits being better, that's true only if you consider the pension. If you are talking about benefits like health coverage and 401K, I really haven't noticed much of a difference. If you are counting not working over 40 hours as a benefit then that's a big plus in the govt's favor.
Based on Rimrocker's post and my witnessing my mother, the best perk is the amount of PTO. I don't know how I'd manage to use all that vacation time. My new employer requires me to work 2,200 hours annually. And to Rimrocker's most recent post: I think payments to contractors is a bigger concern.
It's a huge concern. During Perry's administration, Texas (disregarding many voices in state government) attempted to contract out jobs traditionally done by state employees in various state agencies. Senior state staff were encouraged to retire, even offered large bonuses to do so. It was thought that this would save the state a great deal of money. It was a failure. Look it up. Folks don't have a clue as to how hard many government employees work. I know several state employees on salary who joke about the comp time they never get to use, which is "compensation" for overtime incurred by salaried state employees. Basically, many of them often work gratis.
True, but to get the major time off like he is referring to you have to have 15 years of service. I only get 13 days for example, which was actually less than what I had in industry. It will pay off in time, but the key is "in time". I'm not complaining. I'm just saying the "better benefits" aren't necessarily true. Or better yet, not true unless you stay forever. The best benefit I have seen so far was the ability to invest your funds in some govt acct that is guarenteed to not lose $$. Granted the returns are very low, but that was a lifesaver for all the older employees who didn't want to lose their $$ when the market tanked (from what I hear).
I don't think he believes this, the bigtexxx would never knowingly do something so provocative and inflammatory.
Understatement of the year. The Reagan-era mantra of "private sector efficiency" is pure malarkey. In my experience contracting out almost always increases the costs for government. This is hardly surprising, when you think about it, thanks to a combination of profit incentive and poorly run/maintained contracts. More to the point, the most striking thing about government contracting is the amount of subsidizing this represents. Capitalism? Not even close. DoD contractors are just government-subsidized high-tech firms. I doubt you'll ever hear the moron anti-socialist crown complain about that though...
They need to reevaluate the postal employees. I'm not talking about the delivery guys, I'm talking about the ones that work in the post office that won't even look at you to help you unless you start banging your fist on the counter. Especially when one is standing at the counter, has made eye contact with the person (or what passes for one) behind it, and is ignored for 5 full minutes without so much as a "I'll be with you in a minute" from the lazy slug.They are certainly overpaid and run very little risk of losing their jobs and they all have Spoiler BAD ATTITUDE!!!
Well, not everyone... Actually the truth is there are plenty of hard workers in the public sector, and there are plenty of lazy people in the private sector. The private sector does work more hours, but there is a lot more to hard working than time spent at work.
The private sector can easily be more efficient than the public sector, but that doesn't make it more efficient to contract out. If the government can do a job for $100,000, and the a contractor can do it for $90,000, than the contractor is more efficient, but its that profit incentive that makes it end up costing the government more, because the government isn't getting it at cost. I have many clients who work as contractors for federal, state, and local government, and most of them make a substantial amount of money.
I tend to agree with your assessment. However, if I worked in customer service and you banged the counter for my attention, you would probably get ignored more because of your ****ty attitude.
