What is it like working for Texas State Government? (student loan, school)

[wellboy]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Well, yeah, but I have more trust in the existence of the state of Texas than medicare/medicade when I turn 65

So far, pension is the single most attractive thing for me.

Just wondering, what is the probability that ERS goes broke or gets eliminated/terminated?

[Trainwreck20]

I think that it is actually quite well funded and stable...it IS the retirement program for the politicians, remember (as opposed to the Teachers Retirement System, which got raided.. ).

[wellboy]

Originally Posted by achtungpv

When I heard this, I asked HR to clarify that if an employee threatens to murder somebody we can't fire them but if they go to espn.com on their lunch break we will. They said yes.

This is so lame. Every place has some stupid rules.

[jacobmdoty]

I am trying to find out something. I have been on State active duty fighting fires for the National Guard. We make a standered rate of 121 a day or on average 3630 for a month. We are recieving checks late first off sometimes a month late, but my question is are checks after taxes are coming in at 2,700 dollers total. Do these taxes seem right and are checks that are paid by taxes supposed to be re-taxed?

[Exiled Texan]

Ya know, the inability to fire people is a negative too. A huge frustration for me.

[chuck_steak]

Originally Posted by achtungpv

pay is about 80% of the private sector.

Layoffs do happen but usually only when the economy is doing poorly.

You earn 8 hours vacation a month to start...increases to 9 after 3 years i think and if i remember correctly you get another hour or so every few years. You earn 8 hours of sick time/mo and that never increases.

Depending on how the dates fall, you get anywhere from 12-15 holidays a year.

I worked at txdot for 5 years and i was only allotted 1 raise every 3 months to give to one of my 14 employees. Some never got a raise while i was manager since i put the money into the valuable employees.

At most agencies, you have to watch your back because a lot of employees are into empire building to make up for the poor salaries.

The state requires 6% be deducted from your paycheck for retirement. You are vested at 10 years and get the state match. Nothing until then. Basically once vested, you'll have 2.2% (i think) retirement income for each year you work for the state. It is based on the average of your final 18 months of salary. So if you work for 20 years and your ave. Pay for the last 18 mos is $50k you would get $22k per year in retirement. It's not a lifetime benefit however. I think you can get a 100% lumpsum payment of the total value of your account at retirement, you can get that $22k for 15 years, or take 60% of the $22k until you die and then your spouse continues to get it for another 10? Years. It's actually a lot worse than having your own investment account. You continue to get free medical insurance until you are at the age medicare kicks in. The leg has talked about getting rid of this several times in the past.

At txdot, you basically cannot get fired (this sucks if you are a manager). You will get fired immediately for surfing the internet or making a long distance phone call though. I received the internet logs for every employee every month to check for non-work related websites. We actually had an employee who's entire job was to check email attachments for personal content. I inherited one employee that was so completely incompetent i seriously don't know if he could spell his name. His entire job was to enter new railroad crossing equipment data into the database. He had an 80% error rate. He would enter alpha characters in numeric fields and vice versa. When i tried to fire him, i was forced to increase his error allowance to 40% and he finally met that and was able to keep his job. The other guy doing that job hadn't made one error in 8 years. I had another employee we thought was bringing a gun to work. He intimidated others so much that one guy had two escape routes planned depending on which direction he started shooting. I wasn't allowed to do anything until he shot somebody. That wouldn't get you fired though unless you surf the web while doing it. We had another employee in the division threaten an hr lady with murder if she didn't open up a spot in a class for him. His punish was he wasn't allowed to take an hr for 1 year. When i heard this, i asked hr to clarify that if an employee threatens to murder somebody we can't fire them but if they go to espn.com on their lunch break we will. They said yes.

omg!!! this is so true, I used to work for the State, and it IS just as you say! Scary stuff. We had employees that I wondered every day how they found their way into the building and to their desks. Truly, they were that stupid, yet they were able to keep their jobs

[chuck_steak]

Originally Posted by wellboy

Quoted from this article,
"[SIZE=3]If you work for the state for five years and keep your retirement contributions on account with ERS, you are a "vested" member of ERS. With five years (60 months) of ERS service credit you are eligible to receive an annuity at age 60. You may receive an annuity and be eligible for state-supported group insurance when you have at least 10 years of service credit and: (1) your age is 65 or over; or (2) your years and months of age plus your years and months of service equals 80."[/SIZE]

While pension is great, group insurance is not so attractive, because at age 65, medicare kicks in anyway.

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Well, yeah, but I have more trust in the existence of the state of Texas than medicare/medicade when I turn 65

The way it works is that when you retire Medicare is your "primary" insurance and the state group insurance is your "secondary". Which means you have both and virtually all hospital and doctor visits are free (no cost out of pocket). There is still the co-pays for prescriptions though.

[Mrs.JT]

My two pennies......the "it takes an act of Congress" to fire a state employee isn't always true. I work for an agency that constantly monitors employees. I've been with this agency for approximately 3 years, and within those three years, I've watched 14 people get fired. I was with another state agency for 7 years previously, and only 1 person was fired during my time there. We have security cameras all over the building, and everything we do is monitored. You'd think that I worked for the FBI....

So it varies from agency to agency...but I'm quite certain my job is somewhat of an exception to the norm.

[ScoPro]

Mrs. Sco is a retired Texas Dept. of Health program manager. She was a perfectionist in her job, and was highly annoyed when her subordinates failed to reach their competence expectations.

I had to talk her into retiring 7 years ago - as she was very reluctant because she really enjoyed her job overall. But now she's glad she did.....no more stress.

The retirement pay & benefits are ok, but nothing to shout about.

[Trainwreck20]

I worked at the predecessor to the TCEQ, and although rare, several employees managed to get fired for a variety of reasons, including not meeting performance goals (which were NOT that hard at all to meet) or failure to comply with internal policy. It varies a lot from agency to agency, though. I have heard interesting things about TxDOT before, interesting to hear them again....

As for retirement, you are vested in retirement at 5 years (or used to be) and medical at 10 years. When I left, your pay was based on the highest average 24 months of your last 36 months? or maybe the highest 24 months of any 36 month period? I don't remember, they tweak them fairly regularly, so you don't really worry about them until you are near retirement.

The current retirement criteria is the 'rule of 80' - years of service + age has to equal 80 before you can draw benefits. I have a friend that started at 22 and is now 43, but also worked for the state in college, so he gets about two years more credit (essentially, he started at 20). Anyway, he has 23 years of service and is 43, which adds up to 66. In seven years (at age 50 with 30 years of service) he will be able to draw (2.2 x 30, or 66%) of his base pay. He makes good money for a state employee, I would assume in the 70-80k range, so he will draw somewhere around 50k per year and retire from the state at around 50 years old. Not too shabby.