Federal "workers" more likely to die than lose jobs

[NUance]

Federal employees' job security is so great that workers in many agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

...

The 1,800-employee Federal Communications Commission and the 1,200-employee Federal Trade Commission didn't lay off or fire a single employee last year. The SBA had no layoffs, six firings and 17 deaths in its 4,000-employee workforce. When job security is at a premium, the federal government remains the place to work for those who want to avoid losing a job. The job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43% last year and nearly 100% for those on the job more than a few years. The nearly half-million federal employees earning $100,000 or more enjoyed a 99.82% job security rate in 2010. Only 27 of 35,000 federal attorneys were fired last year. None was laid off. Death claimed 33.

LINK

"Federal workers"--the great oxymoron of our time. If we'd fire about a third of these lazy pieces of crap we could balance the budget and pay off the national debt in short order.

[gobiggergoredder]

I've worked for large corporations for my entire career and it is very difficult to fire people because we are so afraid of lawsuits. That being said, we still get it done.

 

In general, I would think that an employee that thought they were untouchable would be the most unproductive. Sounds like congress.

[Malth]

I'm sorry, but this article doesn't tell me sh#t. You can't just start throwing around percentages like that. The private sector includes many jobs with an extremely high turnover rate, like the fast food industry. The government, not so much. They need to do things like directly compare public sector position with the private sector equivalent.

[huskertim]

I'm sorry, but this article doesn't tell me sh#t. You can't just start throwing around percentages like that. The private sector includes many jobs with an extremely high turnover rate, like the fast food industry. The government, not so much. They need to do things like directly compare public sector position with the private sector equivalent.

 

 

Not sure what your getting at here Malth but as a quasi government employee, I can tell you it's pretty tought to get fired. I know of many of my coworkers who have been walked off the job (escourted by armed agents mind you) for everything from sexual harassment to theft, whom have been repeatedly reinstated. I realize this is anecdotal but I too have worked in the real world and have never seen the level unaccountabilty I have with my agency. The truth is, most govenment employees I have encountered are just as consciencious about their jobs as their civilian counter parts but the true a-holes simply can't be fired.

[carlfense]

I think there should be less job security and more merit based pay in the public sector. That includes teachers. The difficulty is finding a relatively fair way to evaluate the worthiness of a given employees performance.

[NUance]

I think there should be less job security and more merit based pay in the public sector. That includes teachers. The difficulty is finding a relatively fair way to evaluate the worthiness of a given employees performance.

Ha ha! Teachers are government employees who I truly appreciate. I wish our budgets would allow us to pay them more. I am more critical of federal gov't "workers." I used to work closely with several gov't agencies in Washington D.C. The places were pretty much dead wood from top to bottom. Your tax dollars going straight down the shitter. We could cut loose a third of the federal gov't "workers" and not miss them one bit. On the other hand, the sole reason I had that private sector job was because the worthless federal employees we supported were too lazy to do the little bit of work that their comfortable jobs required.

[strigori]

I think most people are massively overestimating how 'private companies' actually fire people. In most operations incompetence is not grounds for termination, and neither is being lazy. In most places anymore the only two surefire ways to get the axe is to steal something, or stop showing up.

[Malth]

I'm sorry, but this article doesn't tell me sh#t. You can't just start throwing around percentages like that. The private sector includes many jobs with an extremely high turnover rate, like the fast food industry. The government, not so much. They need to do things like directly compare public sector position with the private sector equivalent.

 

 

Not sure what your getting at here Malth but as a quasi government employee, I can tell you it's pretty tought to get fired. I know of many of my coworkers who have been walked off the job (escourted by armed agents mind you) for everything from sexual harassment to theft, whom have been repeatedly reinstated. I realize this is anecdotal but I too have worked in the real world and have never seen the level unaccountabilty I have with my agency. The truth is, most govenment employees I have encountered are just as consciencious about their jobs as their civilian counter parts but the true a-holes simply can't be fired.

 

The point I'm trying to make is that this "report" is meaningless without context. The private sector as a whole is not directly comparable to the public sector as a whole, so saying the public sector is "worse" because it only fires x% of their employees compared to the x% the private sector fires doesn't mean anything. You can't draw any meaningful conclusions from it.

 

 

I think most people are massively overestimating how 'private companies' actually fire people. In most operations incompetence is not grounds for termination, and neither is being lazy. In most places anymore the only two surefire ways to get the axe is to steal something, or stop showing up.

 

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