Government jobs come at a high cost, for they must be paid for with taxpayer dollars. Many government workers have overlapping responsibilities that slow the government’s ability to operate. I believe that nearly every federal agency could improve operations, efficiency and capabilities by cutting redundant personnel by 25% or more. But don’t expect that to happen.
President Obama is keen to expand government and has promised to add as many as 600,000 new jobs in the government sector.
Which brings us right back to Greece. The other, little reported story, about the Greek riots last week, was that those rioters were not members of some subversive, radical, extremists group—most were Greek civil servants and union members protesting “austerity measures” which would crimp their government compensation and benefits.
There’s only a small leap from our federal government workers, their pay and generous compensation, to the overly generous benefits of the Greek workers.
Consider the subsidized healthcare for U.S federal workers. The top-of-the-line, PPO healthcare plan for Blue Cross/BlueShield for a family of four costs about $900 per month. A federal worker pays about $150/month in pre-tax dollars, and the American taxpayer subsidizes the rest and picks up the other $750 per month.
Vacation time is another area in which federal workers are amply compensated. Ten paid federal holidays, ten paid vacation days, with paid sick leave would be considered robust benefits in the private sector. Federal workers are even allowed to accrue this leave, to the point where federal workers may have as much as one full year’s salary (2000 hours) paid to them when they retire from government.
Even as the Pay Czar and other members of congress are criticizing what is seen as excessive, executive, private sector compensation, federal workers can sometimes receive as much as 35% of their annual salary in bonuses each year, These different kinds of bonuses (retention, locality, performance & incentive) supplement other non-monetary compensation such as education and transportation.
President Obama would have been more courageous if he had been more honest when addressing federal workers. He could have warned about the slippery slope of civil service excesses, so recently on display in Greece. Obama could have asked federal workers to take on more responsibilities and prepare the federal government for the cuts to the federal work force that are inevitable. But, he didn’t do that, and instead, kept the myth of the poorly paid, overworked federal worker alive and well.