Gov Workers Threaten “Mass Exodus” If They’re Forced to Work

California government workers, like a lot of federal, state and other workers, haven’t actually been working since the pandemic. Or rather they’ve been ‘working from home’ which is to say working even less than usual.

Now, California is considering asking them to go back to the office four days a week. And SEIU, a radical union that represents government workers, among other useless people, is pulling out all the stops and warning of a ‘mass exodus’.

“Since COVID we have been working and doing the jobs and being efficient and doing the jobs to keep California running,” said Anica Walls, the president of SEIU Local 1000, which represents state workers in Sacramento.

We have been working and doing the jobs and being efficient at working and doing the jobs which we are doing to keep running California… into the ground.

“I feel like there will be a mass exodus. I feel like the state needs to be ready for a mass exodus. We have individuals who have been teetering retirement, who look at this 4-days a week when they have been doing their job efficiently in a hybrid schedule will probably send them into a retirement,” Walls said.

A mass exodus? An exodus is when the slaves escape their masters. This would be the equivalent of the Egyptian taskmasters announcing that they don’t want to be slave masters anymore if they have to go into the fields to whip their slaves four times a week.

I’m not sure it really counts as an exodus when the people leaving are already a plague.

Anyway if these incredibly efficient government workers are forced to come into the office to pretend to work for four days a week, they’ll retire, at which point they can stop pretending, but will still gobble up taxpayer money.

Democratic Assemblyman Alex Lee, who authored the bill AB 1729, said the issue is critical for many state employees.

“I have heard from so many state workers from even the Bay Area all up and down the state who said this is the thing that matters the most to them,” Lee said. “They don’t want to move. They love their job, but they don’t, they aren’t willing to move after working 4-5 years in state service.”

They aren’t willing to move… because they’ve never ever shown up to work. They love their jobs… because they don’t do them.

Lee’s proposal also requires the state to establish an online dashboard to show how much taxpayer money is saved with telework. Lee and SEIU have estimated remote work saves the state up to $225 million a year.

A billboard off a Sacramento highway warns of future traffic jams caused by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order. State workers argue they have been working efficiently under hybrid schedules since the COVID-19 pandemic.

If for the sake of discussion we accept the article’s premises (like: employees work less from home than in the office — which is definitely not always correct),

then —
we should be happy to have govt employees working from home.
many of them, anyway, hold jobs that are NOT needed and in some instances are harmful (you can put your own candidates list here ... most EPA/CEQA, all ATF, most DOEd, many DMV, income tax, etc.)

the less work these folks do “for us” (really it is” TO us) the better, imho.

let them work from home. let them work from Pluto if that would reduce their productivity even more so.

From the article: A “mass exodus” of government workers however would save billions.

Quite the opposite. The least expensive employee is one you already have.

California in particular, due to its high cost of living, will end up paying significantly higher salaries for replacement employees.

And trying to outsource the jobs to consulting firms will run into a real difficulty when firms don't want to bid on "extension of staff professional services" because of conflicts of interest. "Sorry, but we're not submitting proposals to fill your consultant extension of staff position overseeing parts of these projects. We're here to do the work, not oversee it from the agency's side. That one position of extension of staff precludes us from dozens of professionals working on the project due to the conflict of interest."

For those companies that do bid on the work, they'll end up using remote employees anyway. I witness it regularly; one overworked and under-experienced on-site consultant constantly going back to their company bosses for help for what should be routine tasks. For every on-site consultant we onboarded, there were an additional three or four as-needed employees in different offices, (often in different states) who were also brought in. At first it was to cover vacations, holidays, medical or maternity leave, but the task load eventually had the alternates performing primary functions.

Many of these companies didn't submit bids when the contract came up for renewal, even if they wanted to, they couldn't get the employees to stay in such a position.

The agency very soon becomes completely dependent on outsiders for any knowledge of the agency's own regulations and processes. And unlike government agency employees, private industry employees change jobs and companies frequently so the turnover leeds to massive problems.

For those positions that weren't outsourced, the agency turnover was massive. I've worked with departments where one agency employee was directly dealing with two or three dozen consultants. The org structure was nominally set up so they only had two or three direct reports but there were so many things that only government employees could do, especially to firewall any conflicts of interests, so those employees transferred out of such positions as fast as they could. They also refused to apply for internal promotions because it only got worse the higher they went. To fill holes for such positions, the agency would offer the position to someone two tiers below, and the taker would do it for the increase in pay and pension but only because they were retiring in a year or two anyway. Their performance was less than stellar and everyone in the chain suffered.

Rinse and repeat.

Conversely, the remote employees offer focus on the job, skill building, and packaged solutions that are shared with other teams, unlike working in the office where the slackers set the pace and employees are burdened with Dilbertonian nonsense.

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