Nazi concentration camp guards were "hard workers". The point is, working hard at what and getting paid by whom at whose expense?
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 12/07/2010 11:03:19 AM PST by fruser1
Federal workers are preparing for a two-year freeze in pay, but they can also expect some positive changes to their sick leave policy in the new year.
Starting Jan. 3, federal workers may swap up to 26 weeks of sick leave for unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to care for family members sick with serious communicable diseases, including the flu. They may also use the benefit to care for an ill or injured family member serving in the military.
In both cases, workers could receive up to 30 days of advanced sick leave if necessary, the Office of Personnel Management announced Friday.
Workers might choose to use unpaid FMLA leave because they can afford to take the time off without pay. Or they might want to use unpaid leave because they have a relatively low sick leave balance and are concerned about preserving enough leave time for future personal need. For example, pregnant women who are trying to accrue paid leave time could take advantage of the unpaid leave option to care for a severely ill or injured relative.
snip
As defined by OPM, family members are spouses, children, foster children, stepchildren, stepparents, grandparents and grandchildren, and same-sex or heterosexual domestic partners. The definitions were expanded to include same-sex relationships in June as part of President Obama's pledge to expand worker benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian federal workers.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Why should civilians get a pay freeze when their non-government employers can pay them out of voluntarily handed-over profits?
My husband works for a city gov’t. and consistently works 12 hour days (no overtime, he’s salaried.) No pay raises for the past 3 years, in fact last year across the board pay cut of 3%. No COLA, of course. No additional “leave” policies. Hiring freeze, so those with exisitng positions have to carry more of a work load. The good news, I guess, is our city is now fiscally above water...no red ink on the books, but it took sacrifice on the part of city employees for it to be that way.
Seems that on state and municipal levels the employees are making sacrifices, but on the federal level very little sacrifice has been made.
And as far as civilian employees...glad your brother got a promotion, but our family members (some engineers from schools like GaTech, some with their master’s degrees in their field are are suffering from depressed wages...but are glad to be employed at least.)
I think it interesting that enough public employees have saved up enough sick leave that this has an audience.
I know long-time employees can eventually rack up a lot of sick days, but this sounds like it would be relatively rare in the private sector. For example, at a company I worked for, your combination vacation days and sick leave days were capped--you had to take any excess in that year of lose them. Sick days were fairly generous at this place, but not designed as a long term saving program.
I work for DOD and take exception to the BS from some of the feepers. Some just don’t have a clue and can’t distinguish between unionized state workers benefits and retirement vs. fed benefits and retirement. Most of us in DOD bust our ass’s anywhere, anytime in support of the warfighter.
I knew that state and local did not have it as well. Hopefully you will see a raise in the future after the sacrifices that were done over the last three years. Hopefully the economy just comes back. I predict that it will recover in 2012 IMHO. Thanks for the info.
100 percent agreed!!!
I can’t roll over any paid time off - it’s use it or lose it - and I have lost it in the past because work needed to get done. The federal government apparently doesn’t see it as a major accounting liability to allow employees to accumulate large amounts of sick time the way the private sector does.
Have you ever speculated on the result of all IT operations going on strike like a union and letting the mouthy jerks watch how fast the entire mechanism of their “multinational corporations” grind to a halt?
They like to make all that money, they can try fixing their networks and computers their own damn selves.
Should not take them more than, oh, one generation to get up to speed. Perhaps they just might see the light on correcting their priorities and directing funds to what keeps them in the game and dump most of the parasitic “management team.”
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It helps that I appear to be immune to influenza and a number of other infectious diseases, but still I had to fill my jaws with crowns, implants and bridges sufficient to pay for a very nice car ~ clever scheduling at the dentist kept the hours at work down, plus if you don't use anesthesia it all goes faster.
There were other people who spent their sick leave on what we always called "mental health days". One fellow who did that was a paraplegic. One day his wife, who was a nurse, pushed him down the stairs in his wheelchair ~ I think he was right in taking those days, but his wife ought to have been taking them too!
Heart attacks are the worst. A federal employee who has a heart attack can count on spending 1/4 to 1/2 of his lifetime possible sick leave hours on one. Amputations are less wasteful of time. Liver cancer, though, is quite surprising. Couple of decades back we had four people at work die from it. They worked right up to the week they died, and minimized the impact on their sickleave.
First off, we all learned it doesn't hurt that much, and secondly, your spouse's annuity will be higher if the sick leave balance is converted upon your retirement.
Yes, federal government employees make such hard headed decisions in the face of impending terror and death! The courage to do that comes from hours at the office water cooler eh! (Or, more likely, because the federal government system has a bias toward hiring folks willing to make decisions).
My mindset and the mindset of most IT workers is to keep things working, not shut them down.
Some people had both. Some had neither ('cause they use it).
Yea, they know that.
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The ones I saw at HHS when I went for an interview were working hard all right - watching soap operas on the TVs in their cubicles. By the time I got to the interview room, I already didn't want the job.
And let’s not forget the raises those thieving federal workers gave themselves:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/23/AR2007042301563.html?hpid=topnews
Metro eliminated the Metrochek program entirely because of the federal worker abuse.
Something industrial union workers found out the hard way years ago.
Nazi concentration camp guards were "hard workers". The point is, working hard at what and getting paid by whom at whose expense?
Good to see a fellow DoD’er out there ... there is way too much bashing of federal employees. I worked for the largest defense contractor a year ago and then made the jump to DoD. I can easily say that an hour of my time cost the taxpayer $200 (shocking isn’t it ... that defense contractors ultimately get paid with tax dollars) when I worked for the contractor ... now it costs $100. I have eliminated the middleman and the government is getting a much better deal that they did this time last year. And I still make the same salary, but the work is much more challenging.
OK, so after defending Fed workers, you are now limiting your defense to just DoD workers because those are the ones you’re familiar with. I used to work at the VA hospital and there were bad workers and good workers, just as there are in any hospital. But there were a great many workers who were committed to the Veterans and would do anything for them. I know of instances when a vet without a winter coat would have a coat, gloves and hat bought for him by an employee out of their own pocket. These folks were devoted the the veterans.
I know there are unnecessary Federal agencies and in many cases whole agencies should be done away with, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole bunch of workers who are committed to do their jobs well for their taxpayer clients.
But I can certainly agree there are way too many useless Federal employees in Washington DC.
Of course, we all can just rejoice in the never ending stream of bounced tickets from NOCs in India that restate the obvious on tickets to empty their queues and then local Desktop Support and Helpdesk has to step in for the offshore "engineers" i.e., call India and step them through telnet sessions and services restarts and THEN follow up with the facility rep to see if they are back up because they refuse to talk to "Bill" in Bangalore that has a "Masters Degree" in (I $hit you not) Microsoft Office.
Like I said, it's speculation. Not wanting to start a keyboard slugfest.
Perhaps just plant a few seeds of dissent. :-)
Who knows, you might get that raise...
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Oh, I’ve seen the joys and idiocy of outsourcing firsthand. But the bean counters are willing to find out the hard way - while their American workers lose their jobs in the process.
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