Gov't workers feel no economic pain

[tsptalk]

Gov't workers feel no economic pain


My comments on this...
For most of my career, federal employees were paid well below private sector wages. Now that they are being paid more fairly, maybe even more than the private sector (and this will probably be cyclical) it has the public's attention.

My thoughts are that the salaries are not the problem. The government has some highly skilled workers and fewer low paying jobs since, as the article pointed out, many lower paying positions like janitorial services are being contracted out. The problem is in the the waste that goes on. The public should be mad at that but instead gov't employees are the target of the frustration.

 

[Frixxxx]

Statistics....Only a fool trusts them.

I live in California, I was a GS-09, two years ago..... with locality I made 54,000.

Two years later, a degree, and a transfer, that I had to hunt down to get promoted, I make 71,000

Hmm, thats $35 an hour....I can't wait until I can make the freaking average salary!

hmm....maybe the government should go back to hiring people instead of contracting all their support functions....might be able to get those $10/hour unskilled positions to average into those numbers!

 

[nnuut]

Assume the position!!!! Being a scapegoat is never fun.

 

[tsptalk]

I remember what started this rise in salaries. It was the dot com boom. The gov't was losing top talent as they left for much higher paying private sector jobs. They had to do some fancy footwork to stop the bleeding.

Many years ago at my agency, computer programmers peaked out at GS-11, and had to compete for a GS-12 as a team leader. Then, everyone got a GS-12, and the team leaders became GS-13's. Jump ahead a few more years and now if you are a programmer and not a GS-13, you are doing something wrong. GS-14 team leaders and technical positions are now being given out pretty freely. So salaries are increasing.

But the dot com boom is long over and the "top talent" is looking back to the government for the higher paying jobs.

I was never a big fan of contractors as I never thought bringing them in did a lot of good. We always had the skills to do the job and we knew the projects much better. We spent half our time training contractors.

The good thing about contractors, cost-wise was that while they were initially overpaid, once they were done with a project, the gov't was done with them. No healthcare for life, no retirement, no matching TSP contributions. To be honest, I don't know what contractors are being paid these days. I don't know if they are paid like they used to be, which was much more than us (gov't employees).

 

[Frixxxx]

The good thing about contractors, cost-wise was that while they were initially overpaid, once they were done with a project, the gov't was done with them. No healthcare for life, no retirement, no matching TSP contributions. To be honest, I don't know what contractors are being paid these days. I don't know if they are paid like they used to be, which was much more than us (gov't employees).

The problem with programming now is the new model of "Agile" and CMMI.

Most programming is black box and the real talent is the linking.

The days are gone of propriety development because of this. It is a very unique project that will enable contractors to monopolize a development project. The Computer programers and scientist here are mainly for QA and O&M functions.

 

[Silverbird]

Well, at this time, where I work almost everyone is over the age of 45 due to hiring freezes.

Almost no one has a job that pays less than GS 7 because you can't live on the wage - we used to have GS 5 secretaries but they would quit in less than a year and move on to the private sector. We eliminated all of the secretary positions as unfillable.

Mail delivery, cleaning and similar jobs are contracted out.

So this bumps up the average salary, contractors don't count and we all are middle age or older.

 

[fedgolfer]

Federal salaries are not where the dollars are "wasted." Look at OMB's object class tables and the pay data (OCs 11 & 12) doesn't even make a dent if went down to zero. From the discretionary side the R&D and grants lines have some cost categories that needs serious addressing... why should the taxpayer be burdened to pay, up to 100% in some cases, indirect costs when we're giving freebies for the R&D to the companies/institutions? From those contracts and grants, those companies/inst's can make pure profit... none of it returns to the taxpayer even though they are the ones that essentially bankrolled it. But let's be serious -- the mandatory/entitlement side of the budget is where the murder occurs... that's more the 2/3rd's of the pie.

In my agency... Human Resources is a joke. In one branch they have GS-15 supervising two other GS-15s (i'm pretty sure that's not even legal). To pay and retain good employees in Budget you sometimes need a desk audit. The schmucks they send to do a desk audit don't understand business processes at all... so they botch the classification. Meanwhile they give themselves 14s and 15s at a criminal pace. We literally have GS-13s in Budget hand holding and managing budgets for the SES level positions... in some cases billions of dollars. It takes an act of god to promote them, meanwhile, they're saving the taxpayers millions by telling SES'ers and GS15s how to be responsible custodians for tax payer money and basically doing their job for them. HR needs revamping... it is a waste.

 

[Show-me]

The anger of taxation and government intervention into our lives is make people lash out at the first available targets. The folks in the trenches.