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I’d say its more about the Government workers pay has kept ahead of inflation with regular cost of living raises, where as the private sector has not kept up with inflation much less increased their average wages. If the private sector had kept up the middle class wouldn’t be suffering as they are and the economy would be booming.
I noticed this thread because the big fat, drug addicted, popular righty radio bloviator has just started a new rant accusing federal workers of being lazy and overpaid. All part of a pattern, however as the man always says something outrageous or particularly racist when he needs attention which the media fall all over themselves to give him. I'd read about this in other sources last week when fed worker groups reacted to the big load's spew.
I retired from the feds several years ago after a 40 year career. The last years were particularly unpleasant as management discovered the wonderful world of contractors!! I worked for the US Navy (civilian) and had the great opportunity to move among different areas in the system as the years passed. Spent a lot of time among the magnificent young men and women who man our fleet, and that fleet is the finest in the world.
My last years were spent in a Navy research lab where I had started my career as an apprentice in 1968, but by this time I was a tech specializing in unusual instrumentation and underwater electronics. My formidable "never fail" skills were put to use in the labs research and model testing programs where they were prized by program sponsors and managers who were aware of my reputation.
However then came the contractors. I worked with another group who employed two men from Lockheed Martin who were the finest, talented professionals, both of who had come from years and deep experience in the defense industry. But then came to my group a bunch of ...?? from a corporation that deals with computers and sciences. Wow! One of the guys would come rolling in around 9:00 - 9:30AM (everybody else started 6:30 - 7:00) and around 1:00 - 1:30PM he would declare, "I'm tired. I'm gonna go home and ride my motorcycle." Falsifying his time card, he got 40 hours pay every week, that is until, he decided that others got overtime pay (for hours that they worked) that he didn't get and that was unfair. So he further falsified his time card and got overtime too. Did I mention the two hour off base lunch breaks while still on the clock? Long time fed worker, it was made plain to us by management that we were "too expensive" and that our reports of contractor fraud and abuse were not welcome, and further that we were at risk of being fired, if we continued our reporting. And firing meant loss of all of our retirement benefits. Pretty strong stuff.
Another member of our contractor group was a black woman who was completely lacking in skills. Work that I had formerly done was given to her, but because of her lack of skill or experience, our management boss spent time "training" her which essentially meant that he spent 6-8 hours a day doing her job while she watched. My work which had been done quickly and without fail was taken away from me. However there was much demand for my services from other departments with whom I had a long relationship. I got lots of work from them as well as the job order numbers to pay for my time. This really p*ssed off my bosses who retaliated by outrageously overcharging my customers jo numbers. I worked for you 5 hours, my boss charged you a 40 hour week. However, I talked with my customers, who expressed understanding of what was going on, and also said that they were happy to pay 40 man hours for my five man hours worth of work, because without which, their test program, worth much more, would have not proceeded. The contractor's black woman had another agenda that she was good at. She would come around blind corners quickly and throw up her hands and scream when meeting another person. She would then report to her contractor management that a federal employee had threatened her with violence and her contractor management would file a serious complaint which resulted in an investigation which wasted a lot of expensive time and cast a cloud over the long time fed employee accused. The woman would also create many, ridiculous accusations of "racial discrimination" against any and everybody, which by this time, had become tiresome even to the contractor company scum which had inflicted her on our organization. Last I heard she had been sent under another contract to an unsuspecting Washington DC US Coast Guard facility.
During my last year with the Navy lab, I was getting concerned about the massive failures in our testing programs, management of which had been taken over by our contractor time card fraud, two hour lunch time incompetents. When one of them, inspired by what I do not know, stood up in our lab and proclaimed, "We are the future!" I had had enough. I asked him about the contractor managed test program of the Virginia class attack submarine. The test had been broken down for two months at startup. During our Navy managed tests we had started after setup in a week or less. Under the contractor managed test program (after the two month startup breakdown) they would get 2 to 3 test runs per 8 hour day. When our Navy group had run the tests, we got them rigged (two men) and running within a week, and while testing, made a run every twenty minutes, 3 runs an hour. I asked the ridiculous "We Are The Future" contractor about how he felt about the test programs they had screwed up and the US Navy people who now had to work 24/7 three shifts a day to make up for all the delays of the contractor's failures, and were now having their home and family impacted by the contractor's failures.
The contractor replied regarding all the Navy personnel his failed contract work impacted, "Well screw them. I'm just here to get my money. I gotta eat."
My question is why do we have federal workers and private contractors hired to do the same job? When you contract work out, thus taking work away from Federal workers, they are not laid off. Thus, you have a number of Feds sitting on their hands for at least part of their day. I want to say that I have not observed this problem in field offices but I have seen it a lot in Headquarters where there are higher graded drones (I don't mean that in a derogatory way but just to point out those higher graded people are not executives). While the government may make the case that it's cheaper for the contractor to do the work, it's not cheaper for that same high graded employee to be sitting there, too, with less work or just shuffled off to another group within that agency. That's one of the reasons why the federal government is bloated. In a lot of cases, the contractor is not doing a job, the fed couldn't do themselves and they aren't replacing government employees either so there is no real savings.
The other big bloat I see in the federal government is groups that exist, again in headquarters not field offices, merely to prop up the need for another executive or high graded manager. Why is the span of control so different in headquarters operations with higher graded employees compared to field offices with lower graded employees? Why are Grade 15 first line bosses managing a handful of Grades 14 and 13 employees in Headquarters while in the field, a Grade 15 can have a whole division under them and much more responsibility and work? Why is there a need for a small span of control with such high graded and long time employees in Headquarters? It's ridiculous and in many cases the first line headquarters manager is not managing at all except for evaluations. Instead they are doing glorified analyst work. May I tell you why it's done? It's quite simple. Because the more Grade 15s you have, the need for an executive position (a nongraded fed that comes under a different pay scale and bonus program) is then substantiated.
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