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I bet you wanted all the Wall Street employees to get their pay slashed? So you are for government attracting the best but you don't want private to make a choice in how much to pay their employees.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this post.
I'm just making the point that if you want to attract quality employees, you have to pay them competitive wages. If the economy is booming as Trump claims, then quality government employees will leave for better wages and benefits, leaving behind those people who can't get hired in the private sector. That is not a recipe for building an efficient or streamlined workforce.
The bank I worked for in the 90’s paid 100% tuition reimbursement if your degree was in an appropriate field. You had to work there 24 months before it kicked in. You had to get a ‘C’ or better. That paid for mine.
Of course you're paying for it - every time you use that company's services or some other business with whatever price structures it maintains. Sure depending on the situation there may an illusion of choice but at some point that's restricted by a number of factors just like the ability to not pay for governmental costs is limited because for most it simply is not practical to obtain another citizenship.
Think of it as a continuum.
The country as a whole functions a bit like an individual corporation with various profit centers and with associated administrative costs. Those administration costs (that include defense, although arguably its' costs like those of other governmental purchases expand the economy) are assessed as taxes.
Talk radio soundbites turn the complex into simplified nonsense.
As ex-Navy Officer/Fed. Employee, I can tell you that they ARE overpaid, and that even without a pay raise, they will still be overpaid, and none of them will resign because of it. Many, if not most of them, would still be overpaid with a 50% pay cut.
Federal employees are Rut-Monsters. They find a comfortable Rut of tasks and never get out of that RUT. Learn new things? Sorry, not part of my rut. Learn how to use a computer, Sorry not part of my rut......
And almost ALL of them vote Dimocrat already.
I did a fellowship at a federal agency, and I mostly agree with you. A lot of federal government work is so heavily administrative that top positions being filled by PhDs could be done by much “less expensive” employees; so in that sense, many are overpaid. One of the reasons that PhDs that get professional-level positions stay in the federal government for their whole careers is that they don’t develop or maintain a lot of transferable skills. So they wouldn’t have the CVs to be competitive for academics or industry/private sector. That is why they have a lot of fear and panic around the time of potential government shutdowns.
There are definitely exceptions. Intramural scientists and clinicians could and are definitely recruited from the outside. Also, some of the top positions in the federal government are filled by people who had a full, successful career in academia or the private sector, and they take federal positions as their final career move. I’ve found these to be the hardest working federal employees I came across. Many career feds had a 9-5 mentality that they would not be able to get away with outside of the federal government. Also, there was so much teleworking when I was in my fellowship, which was really strange. Nobody was ever in the office. I get teleworking can be productive, but there is something about actually coming into the office. It just seemed like another very lax trait of career feds.
I did a fellowship at a federal agency, and I mostly agree with you. A lot of federal government work is so heavily administrative that top positions being filled by PhDs could be done by much “less expensive” employees; so in that sense, many are overpaid. One of the reasons that PhDs that get professional-level positions stay in the federal government for their whole careers is that they don’t develop or maintain a lot of transferable skills. So they wouldn’t have the CVs to be competitive for academics or industry/private sector. That is why they have a lot of fear and panic around the time of potential government shutdowns.
There are definitely exceptions. Intramural scientists and clinicians could and are definitely recruited from the outside. Also, some of the top positions in the federal government are filled by people who had a full, successful career in academia or the private sector, and they take federal positions as their final career move. I’ve found these to be the hardest working federal employees I came across. Many career feds had a 9-5 mentality that they would not be able to get away with outside of the federal government. Also, there was so much teleworking when I was in my fellowship, which was really strange. Nobody was ever in the office. I get teleworking can be productive, but there is something about actually coming into the office. It just seemed like another very lax trait of career feds.
You act like the feds are the only ones who telework. Tons of private companies do telework. The traffic in the DMV area is horrific, and some places have double the number of employees as there are spots to park cars, so it can be literally impossible to drive to work for many people. Agencies also are often inaccessible by public transportation. Teleworking can absolutely help relieve congestion issues.
You act like the feds are the only ones who telework. Tons of private companies do telework. The traffic in the DMV area is horrific, and some places have double the number of employees as there are spots to park cars, so it can be literally impossible to drive to work for many people. Agencies also are often inaccessible by public transportation. Teleworking can absolutely help relieve congestion issues.
No, I don't act like Feds are the only ones who telework. During my experience, the telework, as a whole, more than anywhere else I've worked. People telework here and there, but it seemed like the majority of the week the office would be empty, and people were supposedly "teleworking." Don't give me the excuse of DMV traffic or any agency not being near a metro stop; that's lame! I grew up in the DMV and people make it work. If you have a position in a top-tier consulting firm or in industry/academics, you're not going to be teleworking to "help relieve congestion issues." That's just lame!!!
That's true. And if a company does that too much, they risk going out of business. Same thing could happen if they never get rid of the chaff, too.
What is killing GE is the business model that (Neutron)Jack Welch began back in the 80s. I know this because I was there. Jack believed that any segment within GE had to be number one or two in their respective market. If not, he sold off the division. "Lean and Mean" was his mantra. It made no difference if the division was immensely profitable. He would sell it off anyway. The division I worked in never got sold off, but I left for other reasons, on my own initiative. I worked in field service in the Medical Systems division, and I grew tired of being the one to tell the customers that we could not do what they needed because it didn't fit the bottom line.
While I was with GE from 1980-1986, GE worldwide went from about 400,000 employees to 300,000. At the time, GE was considered the business to model your business after. Want to know what began the death of company loyalty to its employees? There it is.
I'm well aware of the Jack Welch stories from a relative who worked as a top executive in a GE joint venture. As you know, Jack used the "green light - yellow light - red light" system to rank employees with managers forced to place a certain number of employees in each category regardless of actual performance. Red light employees were out the door - at least that's how I remember it.
And, yes, some of Jack's ideas spread into American corporate policy and even into the government (where they were even less functional). Jack was the boy-wonder. So, yes, you can have a major alpha dog get control who implements all sorts of "creative" policies that are in the end destructive - at least to American workers.
I tend to place Trump in this category.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruzincat
I wasn't born then, but weren't things a lot worse before the start of the 20th century? Things were really bad. In the late 60s I started working in a meat packing plant in Ohio. I was drawn to read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. If you haven't read it, you should. You think things are bad now? I can see how the union movement got started after reading that book. I hope we never get to that point again, but I can see us moving in that direction. There are two ways to avoid it. Grow the unions again to keep the bad employers honest or grow the economy to where there are more jobs than there are people to fill them, forcing the bad employers to treat their employees better. Can you see where I am going with the latter? In one word, Trump.
Yes, I've read "The Jungle" - twice actually and would recommend it highly to the AnCaps on this thread. My take is that the union movement had its roots more in the late 19th century with "The Jungle" instead quite influential in helping to spark the progressive movement of the early 20th century.
Americans who could then afford meat didn't care so much if their local packer died from having been ground into meat but they sure as heck did not want to eat the guy. Hence, government regulation. And government jobs for meat inspectors.
My take is that bad employers treat their employees badly as a result of initiatives like those implemented by the likes of a Jack Welch. And that Trump is in his mold with this denial of cost of living (in this particular economy) an example.
Edited to add: I'll insert a few quotes about Jack Welch:
"Is the former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch the Dick Cheney of the business world? It’s a comparison that both would probably take as a great compliment. In terms of being revered by their supporters, their cut-throat world view and their willingness to stick it to the people trying to clear up the mess they made, the similarity is striking. They both made other people lots of money, though – something that can buy plenty of forgiveness. Tony Blair, take note. ... Mr Welch remains a staple of the financial television world over here. He’s never afraid to voice his opinions on his successors, never mind his often odious political opinions, all the while embellishing the myth of his own brilliance." (Independent, 2015)
Again ... this sounds more like Trump to me, than Cheney.
To me the point is how can you claim the best economy ever AND a national economic emergency that stops you from congressionally approved pay raises?
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I did a fellowship at a federal agency, and I mostly agree with you. A lot of federal government work is so heavily administrative that top positions being filled by PhDs could be done by much “less expensive” employees; so in that sense, many are overpaid. One of the reasons that PhDs that get professional-level positions stay in the federal government for their whole careers is that they don’t develop or maintain a lot of transferable skills. So they wouldn’t have the CVs to be competitive for academics or industry/private sector. That is why they have a lot of fear and panic around the time of potential government shutdowns.
There are definitely exceptions. Intramural scientists and clinicians could and are definitely recruited from the outside. Also, some of the top positions in the federal government are filled by people who had a full, successful career in academia or the private sector, and they take federal positions as their final career move. I’ve found these to be the hardest working federal employees I came across. Many career feds had a 9-5 mentality that they would not be able to get away with outside of the federal government. Also, there was so much teleworking when I was in my fellowship, which was really strange. Nobody was ever in the office. I get teleworking can be productive, but there is something about actually coming into the office. It just seemed like another very lax trait of career feds.
We can telework 1 day a week. Many of our private sector support staff telework full-time. It's tough to get them to show up for a meeting.
I do know some agencies, like Patent and Trade due almost full-time telework.
But I agree with you, I think in some jobs telework needs to be much more limited. It definitely hampers collaboration and new employees don't get the "learn by osmosis" effect of watching all the workings of the office. It really does have its downsides.
Great argument for no public unions among other things. President Reagan had the cure for government employees - the air traffic controllers - who thought they outranked a president.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Gringo
Isn't there an embattled Pub representative in N Virginia whose constituency includes scads of govt workers?
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President Trump cancels Federal Pay Raises
