We've heard a lot in the past couple of years, pro and con, about escalating CEO compensation, but it seems to me at least one argument in their defense has merit. It is important to pay enough to recruit and retain the best talent available in the highly competitive global marketplace.
What seems strange to me is that those who believe this is true, that you have to pay well to attract the best talent, usually don't accept the same argument when it comes to government employees. One of the more dangerous consequences of the financial crisis is how governments at all levels are, in effect, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. In the rush to balance their budgets, some are indiscriminately firing, freezing and cutting pay, and cutting pensions--too often impacting the people who actually make government work.
We need to take a hard look at pensions, but it is important in a fair society that reforms take into account the fact that over the years many public employees helped meet government budgets by forgoing salary increases in return for ironclad promises about pension benefits.
Our education system turns out students who will have to compete in that same global marketplace. Doesn't it follow that our teachers' pay and benefits should be competitive enough to attract first-class talent? We need capable, dedicated first responders--police and fire department personnel -- to meet the global and local threats we face. Yet financially strapped state and local governments are drastically cutting their pay and benefits. Do we really want to lose the best and brightest among them?
At the federal level, do we want to cripple the agencies in charge of food and drug safety? How about the National Institutes of Health or the Center for Disease Control? Don't we need the best in the FBI and the Inspector Generals' Office to fight waste and fraud?
Federally employed scientists working at the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the U.S. Geological Survey have been responsible for enormously important inventions, from the Internet and GPS to the bar code and the micro chip. Do we want to cut their funding so drastically that such achievements will not be possible in the future? From the Commerce Department to the State Department to the National Science Foundation to the Patents and Trademarks Office, we need to recruit and retain the very best if we are to compete successfully with China, India and other rising powers.
As I write this, we are doing exactly the opposite. We are losing the very people we need to make us successful. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers student survey, the number of students planning to work in the public sector has dropped by 40 percent. Federal government retirements have increased by 24 percent in the past year. It is estimated that over 20 percent of all federal employees are eligible for retirement. Can you imagine what would happen to this country if 10 percent or 20 percent of our most experienced federal government employees suddenly walked out the door?
Yes, there are those who think they would welcome this. Just get rid of all those overpaid government jobs, they say. The fact is, there are fewer executive branch civilian employees today than there were when Richard Nixon was president. As for public employees being overpaid, the Congressional Research Service reported that the average private-sector salary in 2010 for a recent college graduate was $48,661. Entry-level federal workers start at $34,075, or $42,209 for candidates with superior academic achievement.
Is there waste in government? Of course, just as there is in most human activities. But if you think it can be rooted out by congressional fiat, you are dreaming. You need dedicated, smart, qualified people on the ground to smell it out and fix it.
Most people in government are not there just to make money. They want to make a difference, but they do need to provide for themselves and their families.
What we need in the complex world we live in is smarter government, and to do that we must recruit and retain the best.
Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. Senator from Delaware. Please visit www.tedkaufman.com for more information.
This piece first appeared in the Wilmington News Journal.
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Step two to fix spending look at what the goals of our republic are, not on specific group. Clean water air and food for all (read preamble "provide for the common defense"). Get those up armored and weak@ssed Humvee out of harms way(they are death traps). Send the men and women that sent those vehicles into combat to rendition for the purpose of finding out who else is involved. The civil servants are required by law to do certain things in certain ways. Don't blame them if they are inefficient because they have poor training poor guidance and poorer rules to follow or else. 18 to 1 and everyone gets educated safely. 30-1 and only 12 children get educated. Over that,Social Security Disability happen due to student violence. Border Patrol: One post requires 5 people- 24 per day X 365 per year=8760 Mh@y/2080 maximum man hours without sick annual training court or overtime = 4.2 men for 1 - 24 hour position. 20,000 agents are assigned to the 1954 mile Mexican border /2(partnered for safety)=10,000 /5(rounded this up for s/a/t/c)= 2,000 this means 1 patrol group per mile 24/7 without depth, pick up vans for detainees, strike teams, supervisors, investigators, camera watchers and check points. Now everyone can see what I see. Best wishes.
You really do get what you pay for.
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/05/6345539-20-government-workers-with-super-sized-pay
In California: A pension check and an unemployment check ?
There's no hard data on these special kinds of double dippers, but to give you a flavor, reporter Robert Lewis found that 53 former sheriff's deputies in Sacramento County collected a total of $300,000 in unemployment benefits last year, along with their regular pensions.
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In Illinois suburb, a $435K parks director with a $166K pension
In Highland Park, Ill., a northern Chicago suburb, park district Executive Director Ralph Volpe and the local parks commission provide an instructive example. Volpe's salary in 2008 was $164,000, but the commission added $270,000 in bonuses. That raise was nice, but even nicer was the step up in his pension, which is based on an his last-year salary. The bonuses helped bump Volpe's pension up by more than $50,000 per year. The $166,000 he'll make annually now that he's retired exceeds his top base salary for the job.
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Clarkstown, N.Y. -- an average salary of $150,000
Disclosures that retiring police Capt. Thomas Purtill pulled down $543,000 last year –- tops for all municipal workers in New York state. Purtill wasn't alone: Four of the top 10 municipal workers among the state's 1,500 municipalities were Clarkstown cops. Nearly 150 of Clarkstown's 173-member police force earned six figure salaries in 2009, not including overtime, for an average salary of $151,000.
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The average gov't worker has at least a bachelors degree, cannot have had convictions bankruptcy or other things that might put them in a blackmail-able position. They have to pee in a cup if asked to. They are not average, their work isn;t average (secrets need to be kept-Bradley manning we don't need) and the pay is not too high.
The main draw for gov't employment has been job security, even when it means making less than they could in the private sector. Now even that advantage is being threatened, and we'll end up w/even more mediocre people running gov't because the talented ones will no longer take the job. How do you think that will improve things?
Vote for the Kucinich, Warren, Grayson CPC progressives in the primaries and the dems in the general.
"Yes, there are those who think they would welcome this. Just get rid of all those overpaid government jobs, they say."...
"Entry-level federal workers start at $34,075, or $42,209 for candidates with superior academic achievement."
So the author presents a "problem", realizes the rebuttal, and then provides the most damning against his own original argument. Well, that saves me plenty of commenting time xD
Besides that MILITARY guys are given a big hiring advantage. The biggest employer of our heros is the government and the majority of government workers are military.
Best way to say thanks to them is to give them a job when they've done their duty.
Second, the average federal employee is not at flipping burgers levels of training and experience. They are on average at LEAST educated enough to have an associates degree PLUS have on average many years of experience within the field....
By the way, they already are paid well, so that's a moot point.
Second, that's NOT a moot point because not only are they currently on a pay freeze there are many who are trying to CUT their pay!
Govt employees dont get paid more. Their industry counterparts get more pay. But govt employees enjoy job safety and certain benefits in terms of health care etc., which seems to be a sore spot for most people. In the government you are not at the mercy of the HR dept as there are certain rules in terms of promotion, collective bargaining rights, union approval and regular pay raises to adjust for inflation (the step increases within a grade). That is important because unlike in the private industry, you wont end up making the same money for years. Govt pay adjusts for that and it treats people with dignity. You cant work people to death and the government recognizes that in order to have contented employees, you need to treat them well.
And no matter, the job of govt is governance and it is staggering how many people really either dont appreciate that about the government. A lot of it is envy but a lot of it is just gross misinformation. Trsut me you dont want Koch brothers running the EPA>
If only this was the case.
The problem is these positions are competitive and people have to be the best candidate to get the spot...most don't/can't make it. That's why for the few (because it's mostly contractors and not gov't hirees these days) secretaries that are hired have bachelors degrees....
and the hirng process demands that the best person be taken even if someone's sister or brother or spouse knew about the job and applied...no nepotism.
the supposed "meritocracy" culture doesn't like it because it is a true meritocracy, not good ol' Romney dad setting up his kids in the ways of old
I guess the republicans want slave workers for the taxpayer.
Here's the reality, the organizations that are absolutely massive are the ones that are most unresponsive to the consumers . . .
Our Government at the Federal level and most state levels is massive.
Republic or plutocracy. Liberals or conservative, the good half of the dems or any of the GOP/Tea?
Choose.
The biggest wastes reflect the preferences of pandering and paid-off members of congress, but there is also the pretense that waste is unique to government. I have worked in small companies and a very large and successful corporation and have seen plenty of private sector waste. Some of it is just stupid and some of it is just unavoidable given the lack of clairvoyant managers. But unless the situation is spectacularly egregious, companies are not criticized for this, whereas in government its a scandal.
In the US you can drink the water, and although there may be BST and residual pesticides in our milk, at least there is no deadly melamine adulterants. Fire departments extinguish fires and aid those in peril, police catch a fair number of bad guys and aid motorists, the coast guard rescues boaters and guards the coast, and while nearly everyone knocks the post office, in truth the service is astonishingly reliable at a cut rate cost (this despite the fact that the PO has not been subsidized by taxes for decades).
"Do we want to cut their funding so drastically that such achievements will not be possible in the future?"
Naw, we will just buy all our manufactured stuff from China, or whoever gets to become the technology leader of the future. If we have any money with which to buy it, that is.
Low productivity in the government workforce will not run a cycle that ends in the failure of the business and the end of low productivity. Instead it grows, fed and protected by unions it bleeds the taxpayers without recourse, with remorse.
Don't get stuck on the spelling...this isn't a peer review process.
Private companies' mission is to make a profit - for the shareholders, for the CEO, for the owner.
See the difference?