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I would suspect that most people who work until 6 or 7 pm every night (after starting at 8 or 9 am) in the private sector aren't getting paid extra for those additional hours. This is generally seen as an extra effort they have to make in order to have the *privilege* of keeping their job and its *regular pay*.
My friends who work for Deloitte, KMPG etc often work until 10pm or even midnight during tax season, with zero OT payment.
Exactly, who is holding them accountable? I worked in county and state government in the U.S. --- 50 % of it was useless meetings, listening to various windbags hold forth. Committees ruled. Committees take 10 months to accomplish what a team of 2 people could do in 10 weeks. At 4:30 pm sharp most of the staff would be out of the building. You never see that in private enterprise, where people nowadays regularly work until 6 or 7 or 8 pm.
It is no secret that working for most government agencies is an "easy" job. I'm not anti-government as I believe it has a role to play in our society but there is a misalignment between pay/benefits and incentives/effort that no one talks about. The problem is that unlike a private industry, there is no stock price or shareholders who can demand efficiency. The government manages itself, although in theory it is the taxpayer who it is accountable to. But the taxpayer is represented by the government so this circular system doesn't work. It is not always about the hours worked, I don't expect government workers to work till 7pm on average. You can add value working 8 hours a day but the problem is that everyone I know has two weeks to do something that can be done in one week tops. Given the size of the Canadian government as an employer, a lot of value can be created in this country if we can wring some more efficiency out of this beast but I can't think of any ideas off the top of my head as to how to make this happen as change will have come from within. And the people within not only have no personal incentive for change but they will be swimming upstream against pretty much everyone and will likely drown in the process.
If you include teachers, professors, nurses, cops, firefighters, soldiers, etc., about one in five employed Canadians works for the public sector. This is about average for a western developed country. The U.S. is slightly lower at around 17-18% and quite a few European countries are a bit higher.
If you include teachers, professors, nurses, cops, firefighters, soldiers, etc., about one in five employed Canadians works for the public sector. This is about average for a western developed country. The U.S. is slightly lower at around 17-18% and quite a few European countries are a bit higher.
About 20% of Canadians working for the government sounds right, but 18% of Americans working for the government sounds high. Doing some quick googling, I'm finding 7-8% which feels more accurate.
Regardless, the point is that it is not an efficient entity. And if 20% of Canada's employees are working at 50-60% capacity, then moving this up to say 75-80% can have a huge impact on our productivity and output as a nation.
It is no secret that working for most government agencies is an "easy" job. I'm not anti-government as I believe it has a role to play in our society but there is a misalignment between pay/benefits and incentives/effort that no one talks about. The problem is that unlike a private industry, there is no stock price or shareholders who can demand efficiency. The government manages itself, although in theory it is the taxpayer who it is accountable to. But the taxpayer is represented by the government so this circular system doesn't work. It is not always about the hours worked, I don't expect government workers to work till 7pm on average. You can add value working 8 hours a day but the problem is that everyone I know has two weeks to do something that can be done in one week tops. Given the size of the Canadian government as an employer, a lot of value can be created in this country if we can wring some more efficiency out of this beast but I can't think of any ideas off the top of my head as to how to make this happen as change will have come from within. And the people within not only have no personal incentive for change but they will be swimming upstream against pretty much everyone and will likely drown in the process.
I am fairly familiar with the Ontario government and here is my understanding.
The government is unnecessarily big, with too many agencies that don't have much real work to do. However, the executives of these agencies have the strong incentive to keep expanding since it increases their influence and paves way for them to step up the ladder. So they keep adding branches/divisions and are always reluctant to reduce. Why bother? the money doesn't come from their own pockets.
The leads to not only redundant agencies, but also duplication of work. Sometimes too many agencies work on one thing, and nothing eventually gets done. While in the private sector, any project progresses rather rapildly, in the public sector, an equally sized one can easily last 5 times longer.
Even within agencies that do have a clear purpose, such as infrastructure Ontario, they are extremely inefficient. Any small tiny teeny thing they hold a 20 people 3 hour meeting but end up talking BS and at the end of meetings, nothing is solved. Then they schedule the next 3 hour meeting. day after day, week after week. The quality of their work is subpar. If put in the private sector, they should be fired immediately.
The government also throws tons of money hiring "external consultants", such as investment banks and consultancies, to do the heavy lifting, since apparently government employees don't have the ability. These are big bucks spending but due to the bureaucracy of the government itself, often the money is wasted. It is talk after talk, presentation after presentation, meeting after meeting. A supposedly simply project can last 6 months and go nowhere eventually.
Conferences and business trips are another huge waste of taypayers money. In many cases, they send 3 staff on the plane from Ottawa to Toronto to hold an one hour meeting, when it can be solved simply by teleconference avoiding the $5000 spending. This happens all the time, every single day. They also send employees to $2000 a session conference but end up acquiring no knowledge or skills whatsoever.
Do government serve an essential purpose? definitely. Are the government bureaucrats able to be efficient? I don't believe so. They will always keep wasting money, knowing it is not their own and find ways to justify it. I think all governments are too big and they are always too big. The number of Ontario government employees can be easily cut by 30% and they will still not have enough work to do compared with the private sector. If every government employee is as efficient/busy as a CIBC bank teller, government expenses can be reduced by half.
I am fairly familiar with the Ontario government and here is my understanding.
The government is unnecessarily big, with too many agencies that don't have much real work to do. However, the executives of these agencies have the strong incentive to keep expanding since it increases their influence and paves way for them to step up the ladder. So they keep adding branches/divisions and are always reluctant to reduce. Why bother? the money doesn't come from their own pockets.
The leads to not only redundant agencies, but also duplication of work. Sometimes too many agencies work on one thing, and nothing eventually gets done. While in the private sector, any project progresses rather rapildly, in the public sector, an equally sized one can easily last 5 times longer.
Even within agencies that do have a clear purpose, such as infrastructure Ontario, they are extremely inefficient. Any small tiny teeny thing they hold a 20 people 3 hour meeting but end up talking BS and at the end of meetings, nothing is solved. Then they schedule the next 3 hour meeting. day after day, week after week. The quality of their work is subpar. If put in the private sector, they should be fired immediately.
The government also throws tons of money hiring "external consultants", such as investment banks and consultancies, to do the heavy lifting, since apparently government employees don't have the ability. These are big bucks spending but due to the bureaucracy of the government itself, often the money is wasted. It is talk after talk, presentation after presentation, meeting after meeting. A supposedly simply project can last 6 months and go nowhere eventually.
Conferences and business trips are another huge waste of taypayers money. In many cases, they send 3 staff on the plane from Ottawa to Toronto to hold an one hour meeting, when it can be solved simply by teleconference avoiding the $5000 spending. This happens all the time, every single day. They also send employees to $2000 a session conference but end up acquiring no knowledge or skills whatsoever.
Do government serve an essential purpose? definitely. Are the government bureaucrats able to be efficient? I don't believe so. They will always keep wasting money, knowing it is not their own and find ways to justify it. I think all governments are too big and they are always too big. The number of Ontario government employees can be easily cut by 30% and they will still not have enough work to do compared with the private sector. If every government employee is as efficient/busy as a CIBC bank teller, government expenses can be reduced by half.
I agree about infrastruture. They have been laying new water mains outside where I live for over a year now, recently by my condo building. 90 % of the time when I look out the window at them, there are one or two guys working and about 6 guys standing there. The amount of "standing there" time of these employees is unbelievable. And of course the foremen, or head guys sit inside a heated trailer that has been parked by my condo building for over a year---what do they do in there all day? No idea. They can't seem to finish the Burlington walkway, it's a few hundred yards long, it's been under construction for years.
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