Posted on 11/11/2008 12:51:01 PM PST by Poundstone
The 3.9% pay raise is an average. We have gotten comments from readers complaining that our projected pay rates for 2009 do not show a 3.9% increase for their city or town. An average means that some will get more than 3.9% and some will get less. The base pay rate increase for 2009 is less than 3.9%. The 3.9% average is reached by taking into account locality pay rates. This means that some federal employees in some areas will get less because they are not in a locality pay area.
(Excerpt) Read more at fedsmith.com ...
So the Fannie and Freddie equivalent officers can sign for more than is in the budget and not be held to account?
No but they are different than Federal employees in that Freddie and Fannie are quasi private/federal businesses. The GS level employees are held to a higher standard and are paid less.
Rejoin the free. Try and see how hard it is to earn an honest dollar. It is more be psychologically rewarding, but it's rare to earn more as a private sector employee than an equivalent fedgov employee would earn. And you fedgov sinecurees (assuming that you are one) get many more perks and pensions.
Fedgov employees overestimate the level of job they would be able to gain in the private sector with the work ethic and skills they have.
Compensation of government employees is a major issue but there are many other major issues. Government employees receive much higher compensation than the private sector especially considering retirement benefits and job security. Government pay scales never decrease. Private sector compensation fluctuates. Retirement benefits for government employees are off the charts. The compensation value of the benefits is outrageous. Government employees think they have birthright to retire in their 50s with inflation protection, early retirement medical care, and high replacement income. I have finished two studies of retirement compensation for state government workers so I am very well informed about retirement benefits.
McCain called for a spending freeze at the federal government level. I think this was a sensible recommendation. Elimination of pay raises should be part of the solution for the short term. There are many other areas to review also so I am not focusing just on compensation. If you think that elimination of pay raises is not justified, try to find work in the private sector now.
So go get a real job. You'll find your skills are worth no more than 50-60k at best in the real job market so maybe you're better off continuing to milk that government teat.
There’s that “paid less” fedgov employee meme again.
Read what I actually said. I said that the employees at Fannie and Freddie are paid more than Gov GS employees, at least get the facts straight.
I never said that Government Employees are paid too little, however, the meme is also incorrect that all Gov employees are slackers. I work with some Gov Employees that are worked like dogs as they have a drop dead date of 2011 to complete all tasks.
I’ll swap salaries with you.
We are men. When we work like dogs we are not working like men. Hire some sharp slackers. Then you'll get the job done.
I know a number of Fed workers, and it would be wrong to whale on them. It takes a number of years to reach 150+K. Like 20 years. Their starting salaries are a lot lower than their private counterparts of comparable requirements. A private engineer/software writer will make more money over ten years than a fed engineer/engineer, except the fed worker has a stable slowly increasing salary while the private worker goes thru ups and downs as his company is brought out, or job is outsourced and cannot maintain a steady increasing salary as interruptions occur in his/her employment even when the economy is booming because private labor is competing with global labor. Once you hit 20 years in private industry, skill obsolencence and age discrimination becomes a factor that prevents private workers to demand for higher salaries unless he happens to have skills/experience that is in very high demand or he made it into executive management. An average fed engineer will make more than his private counterpart at the 20 to 25 year mark and definitely more at the 35 to 40 year mark. That is already shown in professional journals. Fed workers get less at the beginning but will build up in the end, while the private worker make more in the beginning and does have opportunities to make it big (ie exec management or start a very successful tech company and sell it off), otherwise will make less in the later years in the career. It is a trade off.
The disparity between retirees in the public and private sectors is going to cause tremendous problems in the future as the availability of private pensions decreases. These same private workers who are funding the Gov't workers who are set for life are eventually going to become very upset.
Having worked with “civil servants,” they rarely are civil nor do they consider themselves servants to the public. Not so sure those Chinese weren’t on to something with the “chop chop” thing to keep government employees in line. ;)
Actually the feds require you to be 55 years old before you can retire without penalty. Most people will work 30 plus years in order to support their kids thru college and retire in their early or mid 60’s with 35 to 40 years of service. That is the old system. The new system pegs 1/3 of their pension amount to Social Security and they cannot collect till they reach the SSA minimum age requirement. The people that do well are former military who transition to the fed system. Their military time counts towards their fed service time. Go in at the age of 17, after 20 years of mil service you are qualified for a pension (age 37 yo) join the fed with 20 years as a starting point, work another 20 years to get 40 years (max out on fed pension) retire at the age of 57 with mil and fed pension. Not bad assuming you are willing to risk the first 20 years in the mil with the possiblity of getting your butt shot at. Nothing ever comes free. Areas of abuse are loading the last three years with overtime to increase the pension amount the individual can collect for the rest of their life. Automatic COLA that do not reflect the state budgets and shortfalls. The fed COLA is linked to inflation (w/o food and fuel). Many state and local COLA are automatic based on the contracts the state signed and agreed to. Public is starting to notice these generous terms and wonder how the taxpayers are going to pay for it all. Many state pensions and healthcare funds are underfunded. Unlike the fed system, these state benefits are classified as contracts, which means the state either comes up with the money or declares bankruptcy. The feds consider their pension obligations no different from Social Security, they can change the terms on their workers any time (including defaulting on it). When employers (private and government) go broke they can do almost anything because they have nothing to lose.
Check the professional journals, and you will see that fed workers start with lower salaries than private equivalent, but after 15 to 20 years, the fed worker will make more than their average private counterpart. Who makes more or less depends on when one takes the pay data. Private counterpart must deal with the turbulance of a global free market that forces them to change jobs every seven years and if he/she does not keep up with the education requirments they are less competitive as they reach their mid 40’s. Before the turbulance of openning our domestic workforce to global competition, private workers always earned more than government workers. Times have changed and old paradigms do not apply.
No of course not but to complain about only getting 150K is horrible. lol.
Nobody was talking about CBD; we are talking about federal employees vs. contractors. But, you go ahead and continue to think you’re quite clever. Because you’re not - your sentence structure and throwing random phrases in about gyms and “sinecure” is bizarre. And then you expect me to know about your informal convo between friends! But anyway, without government people letting contracts you would not have a job, and unfortunately without you guys it would be difficult to get our jobs done (at my current agency, where most of the people are retirement eligible).
At this point, I will go get ready for my meaningless little federal job that I wouldn’t be able to do without people like you to save the day.
Grover was a great man -- I count him as the third greatest President, yet the trouble with corrupt New York City and national politics he solved with a theoretically politically-divorced class of civil servants has become a greater problem still.
Why do folks vote a man with no proven history like Obama? Because they feel a false comfort that the machinery of state could operate well with any fool at it's helm. So they turned the Presidency into American Idol.
Under a policy that ALL government jobs are subject to fire-at-will (just like the private non-union sector) the people would have though considerably harder before electing a man of NO executive experience. Just as that did with Grover, himself. Grover had proven himself as a most effective and honorable executive.
You were the friend to whom I referred.
“but to complain about only getting 150K is horrible.”
It is the American way to want more. $150k isn’t all that much after taxes, about $4,400/paycheck. A $400k home costs $3,000/month alone. That may seem like a tone of dough but it isn’t.
Get a job in the private sector, leach.
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