union contracts...Why do companies Lay off workers when the could reduce their work week or wages???
Furlough is a smoke and mirrors tool used for media consumption and low information voters. In reality it means nothing. “Furloughed” workers get some time off and when a new budget or continuing resolution is approved, they get back pay. In essence the crisis is an increase in their paid vacation time.
union contracts...Furloughs do the job of cutting the expense without getting into a separation of powers dispute.
When an air traffic controller gets his hours cut from 80 per two week pay period to 70 per 2 week period, his pay HAS been cut.
Most of the furloughs have been implemented by cutting a day every 2 weeks or so through the end of the fiscal year. Most agencies aren’t sending folks home for a week or a month.
You’ve got a tension between workers who want to try to get the work done, and senior managers who want a disaster to make the Obama regime look good. It’s the opposite from a normal situation where things are the other way around.
For instance a furlough of one day in 20 means the “worker” gets 5% less pay.
It's a way around the collective bargaining and civil service rules which make government so inefficient.
Because they have ALWAYS received their back pay when the furlough ends.
I think they do furloughs, not only because it is a way to do a cut now and pay the money back later, but because it has no affect on the basic pay structure.
In federal employment, getting a pay cut might be like getting demoted, I think, because you would go down a step or two or even a grade, unless a whole new schedule was used. Then it would also mess with your retirement benefit, which is keyed to the amount of time you spent at your highest pay grade. (The retirement benefit is a savings plan with employer and employee contributions.)
It might also mess with your job description and authority. For example, if you are a senior attorney, a GS 15, you have some responsibilities that junior attorneys, 11 or 12, don’t have. If you go down, how does that affect the pecking order/assignments, etc?
Demwits are nothing if not dramatic. Laying them off is more dramatic than cutting wages and salaries.
Nothing wrong in reducing the salary levels of respective job positions, but it also takes time, just as it took time for them to escalate.
FWIW, Antichristians, Blacks, Women, Lesbians, Gays, have all been promoted to GS12-13 positions with little more than HS diplomas, while white male professionals with graduate degrees and 20yrs experience in the professions rarely are promoted above GS11, and generally only if they are not Christian. It’s a good ol boys club, and those with virtue are set up and worked around by the back office crowd.
If you want to bring back efficiency, first remove the antiChristian bias out of the workplace.
In efforts to reduce costs, simple percentages are now passed down the chain of command.
Every year, reduce your resources by 10%.
Does anybody review the resources with their missions? Rarely.
Our vehicle pool has been reduced down to 3 vehicles per 50 people to run all the utilities, prepare scopes of work, inspect, direct, maintain, repair, and build any facilities supporting a 20,000 personnel population. That is now being reduced to 2 vehicles next year and one the following year.
We now are required to remove PCs from the desktops by similar percentages. 10% one year, another 10% the next.
Nobody decides who’s will be removed as everybody is working on them from the office.
Do we share? Sure, but productivity drops even further.
We already buy own administrative supplies, and we don’t have cafeteria plans.
Our pay is half industry standards and we are forced to pay contractors wages for no skilled labor at rates about twice our hourly salaries.
We already have been working 60-80 hrs/week for the last 12 years and now only receive OT or CompTime perhaps one in 4 hours spent if we are lucky. That has now been eliminated.
Where some of us had alternate working schedules, 4-10hr days vice 5-8 hr days, we are looking at have to go to 4- 8 hr days, while we still commute over 70 miles one way to work. So we don’t really even get the opportunity to find a side job to make up the furlough differential.
Younger hires (within the last 5 years) also face the first RIF layoffs and are also paid initially as college degreed professionals near minimum wage as GS5s.
Additionally, if we are in debt, we are told we can lose our jobs. So credit card debt is not an option.
Might I suggest that instead of reducing our pay, just go back to full time conscription and also provide the full healthcare and amenities WWII Privates to Corporals received. They had more guarantees of a future than present DoD civilians receive, except those who retired and are drawing a double paycheck.
We don’t have many freedoms or liberties anyways and those in authority have less virtue than mid level ranked officers in WWII.
I haven’t noticed a reduction in services from any government agency. Even with the mandatory furloughs. I’d say, just terminate the workers that aren’t needed.