Free Republic

Despite recovery, U.S. public employees face more layoffsBy Lisa Lambert Sun Apr 8, 2012 7:13am EDT (Reuters) - Since 2009, the city of Chesapeake, tucked up against the Great Dismal Swamp in southern Virginia, has cut its workforce twice. This summer, nearly three years after the recession ended, the city of 222,209 has plans for a third round of layoffs. **SNIP** State and local governments for a time were able to shield public safety and education workforces from harmful cuts as the recession deepened. The 2009 federal stimulus fund helped offset lost tax revenue, but that money is gone. Now,...

The list of the 1,000 highest-paid federal employees released last month by Wikiorgcharts.com must have raised eyebrows. In a country where the average full-time employee earns less than $40,000, salaries ranging from $216,000 to $350,000 appear very high. However, the 1,000 feds profiled earn less than the $380,000 that would place them in the top 1 percent of the nation's income earners. And within the federal workforce of roughly 2.1 million, the individuals on the list account for an extremely small percentage. Perhaps more important, the list is a reminder that agencies need to compete in a world where top...

My family and I went to the VA hospital for Christmas services, during which the kindly chaplain said goodbye to the veterans to whom he had been ministering. Like a record number of federal government employees, he has decided to retire this year. Because the federal workforce is older than the general population, a certain number of retirements are to be expected. Yet according to the actuaries at the federal Office of Personal Management, workforce age isn’t enough to account for the surge in federal retirements. It’s not hard to see what other factors are driving federal government employees to...

Workers outraged at Caribbean junket As union bosses continued livin’ it up in the Puerto Rican sun yesterday, municipal workers getting soaked by New York’s cold rain were livid that their hard-earned money was funding the leaders’ Caribbean “convention.” “There goes our union dues!” fumed a furious Local 3 electrician. “They paid for that junket with union dues.” “I’ve worked for 10 months in the last two years. I’m getting laid off at the end of the year,” the electrician railed. “I have no use for the union. All I see is waste, corruption and hypocrisy.” At an Upper West...

Employees may not realize it, but they are getting more expensive. It isn't that their paychecks have suddenly started bulging. It's that other employment costs—like health and retirement benefits—continue to rise. Benefit costs in the private sector were up 4% year-on-year in the second quarter, more than double the 1.7% increase in wages and salaries. On Friday, the Labor Department's employment-cost index for the third quarter is likely to show this trend continuing. The trouble is, this means employers are paying more for workers without actually paying their workers more. Higher benefit costs eat into profits without directly raising a...

On October 19, a 3.6% COLA was announced for employees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) who have had benefits for at least one year. Employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) will get a 2.6% COLA if they have had benefits for at least one year. OPM has issued official guidelines for how this will be applied to federal retirees.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday indicated Congress needs to worry about government jobs more than private-sector jobs, and that this is why Senate Democrats are pushing a bill aimed at shoring up teachers and first-responders. "It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about," Reid said on the Senate floor. Reid was responding to recent comments from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who accused Democrats of purposefully pursuing higher taxes as part of the teacher/first-responder bill, S....

VACATION: Vacation is earned from the first day of employment, but cannot be used until the employee has six months classified service. Full-time employees earn vacation based on the following table. Less than full-time employees earn vacation on a pro-rated basis. Employee status under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Years of Service Non-Exempt Hours Earned Each Year Exempt* Hours Earned Each Year During first 5 104 120 5+ to 10 144 160 10+ to 15 160 176 15+ to 20 184 200 20+ to 25 200 216 25 and Over 216 216 * Some Exempt employees do not...

The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules. The EPA aims to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the Clean Air Act, even though the law doesn’t give the EPA explicit power to do so. The agency’s authority to move forward is being challenged in court by petitioners who argue that...

Ex-employees of solar panel company at center of White House-stimulus loan scandal speak out

Earlier this year, Army employee Louis Bornman watched the news grow worse and worse. Pay freezes. Budget cuts. Politicians demonizing federal employees. But for Bornman, the final straw was when Congress began looking at cutting federal pensions as a way to reduce the deficit. His last day as an operations research analyst at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., was July 30. "I couldn't afford not to retire," Bornman said. "You never know when things will change." Bornman's not alone. Federal employees across the nation are becoming more nervous about proposals to slash their benefits, and many are eyeing the exit door to...

AUGUST 19, 2011 Bank of America Set to Slice Jobs Reductions Total 3,500 in Current Quarter; Many More Seen BY DAN FITZPATRICK Bank of America Corp. is cutting 3,500 jobs in the current quarter and working on a broader restructuring that could eliminate thousands of additional positions, people familiar with the situation said. The 3,500 positions are spread across the nation's largest bank by assets, including investment banking and trading, and the cuts are expected to be completed by the end of September. Some employees already have been notified. Thousands of additional reductions are expected as part of an aggressive...

Here are some interesting charts from reader Tim Wallace regarding "covered employees", those employees that have unemployment insurance. Covered Employees by Quarter Since 2000 click on any chart for sharper image Note that the number of covered employees is still below the 2004 trough and that it took 16 quarters in the wake of the 2001 recession to get back above the pre-recession highs. It has now been 11 quarters since the 2008 high. However, we are still not back to the previous recession dip. Change in Covered Employee Coverage by Quarter Cumulative Change in Coverage Since 1st Quarter 2000...

After years of declining tax revenues, cities and towns across the country are now running out of ways to deal with their ballooning budget deficits. ... Public employee costs account for a large share of municipal budget woes.

the times Daniels OKs bonuses up to $1,000 for each state employee By Dan Carden dan.carden@nwi.com, (317) 637-9078 | Posted: Friday, July 15, 2011 10:45 am INDIANAPOLIS | State employees will be paid a bonus of up to $1,000 each for their efforts in helping Indiana amass a $1.2 billion budget surplus. Gov. Mitch Daniels authorized the one-time payment on Friday to recognize employees he said have spent years doing more with less. "There's not a state in the nation where state employees are more committed to efficiency and care with tax dollars than Indiana," Daniels said. The "efficiency dividend...

Seriously……Google “Stocks Fall 279 Points” or “Stock Market Falls 279 Points”, and you will find very little headlines from the major liberal media outlets. Every search of the major papers and network online sites have already buried this plunge in the Markets as if it just never happened, or they’ve been relegated to their blog sites. We can all imagine how a major stock market plunge would have greeted George W. Bush by our liberal media friends. But, let’s give credit where credit’s due. Patrick Allen posted this story at CNBC dot com with a title that just has to...

"More than 77,000 federal government employees throughout the country — including computer operators, more than 5,000 air traffic controllers, 22 librarians and one interior designer — earned more than the governors of the states in which they work. The findings, from a Congressional Research Service report requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, were released at a time when public workers’ salaries and benefits are under scrutiny across the country as governments try to streamline...."

Homeowner, who owns the land you live on? You might think you do, in America, but you'd be forgetting a few things. One) eminent domain: you could at any time lose you house if, say, your city or state wants to put in a freeway there. Two) County building codes: You can lose your house if it gets too weird, ugly, unsafe, or enough of an annoyance to neighbors. Yes. In the end, this is not as free a country as you think when it comes to home design. Ask former telephone tech Alan Kimble Fahey of Acton, CA, who...

While Western media continue to rhapsodize about the "Arab Spring democratic revolutions" in the Middle East, it may be that the real democratic revolution is beginning to occur in the European Union and the United States. And if the timing is right, the crisis in the European Union may play a decisive part in tipping the American electorate against President Obama and the Democrats in our 2012 elections.Both by their votes and their demonstrations, the semi-enfranchised citizens of nations under the rule of the European Union are beginning to fight back against both the social welfare/debt and immigration/border policies that...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A triple dose of bad news sent stocks sharply lower Wednesday afternoon, with all three indexes set to have their worst day in months. The day started with two disappointing U.S. economic reports that exacerbated fears about a slowdown in the recovery. And late in the trading session, Greece's debt got slapped with yet another downgrade. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) fell 245 points, or 2%, with all but one of the blue chip index's 30 components lagging. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) and Alcoa (AA, Fortune 500) were the...

More than 100 employees of the Internal Revenue Service cheated the government by fraudulently claiming a first-time homebuyer tax credit included in the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages, according to federal investigators. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, in several reports over the past few years, has identified a total of 128 IRS employees who claimed the credit but who also made other claims that showed they either weren’t first-time buyers or bought their homes outside the eligibility period for the credit, which was worth up to $8,000. Meanwhile, one other IRS employee has been charged with...

About 550,000 full-time career federal government and U.S. Postal Service could hang it up and move on at anytime because they are eligible to retire, according to government statistics. The eligible workers represent about a quarter of the 2.4 million permanent full-time employees collecting government or postal paychecks.

Equity among workers is one of Republican Gov. John Kasich’s most consistent arguments in favor of Ohio’s new collective bargaining law. The law, Senate Bill 5, will bring Ohio’s public workers closer in line with private sector workers, who, on average, pay more for health care benefits and have weaker pensions, Kasich repeatedly has said. Now the governor is weaving collective bargaining for federal workers – or lack thereof – into his support for the law. Even though SB 5 restricts collective bargaining for the state’s 360,000 public workers, they would still be better off than federal workers, Kasich recently...

Over the last few years much has been made about the pay and benefit discrepancies separating public and private employees. An endless number of articles and dueling press releases have compared salaries, benefits and vacation days across sectors. But in the flurry of all this analysis, one very simple comparison has been missed. Think about this: The Public Employee Retirement System is making more millionaires than the Oregon state lottery.

Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending. Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts. A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality.... That argument is backed up by a 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It found that federal salaries for most professional and administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered...

As the possibility of a federal government shutdown loomed over thousands of Americans, the article in CNN, April 2, 2011: “Americans Flunk Budget IQ Test”, was quite intriguing. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, most Americans think that the government spends a lot more money than it actually does on Government pensions and benefits. On average, Americans think the federal government spent 10 percent of its 2010 budget on pensions and retiree benefits; the OMB figures indicate the real number is about 3.5 percent. Another area that is not often talked about is the big difference for federal workers...

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- If Congress shuts down the federal government, Washington will still end up paying hundreds of thousands of employees who are sent home. Idled federal workers can apply for unemployment compensation from the states in which they work, and the federal government will pick up the tab. Whether they get their full back pay once a shutdown is resolved is less clear. After the 1995 and 1996 federal government shutdowns, Congress approved back pay for furloughed employees. Federal employee unions say they will fight for a similar measure again. The Department of Labor has told state unemployment agencies...

As we draw closer to a government shutdown, I have been reading with great interest. You see, I am a federal employee employed at Fort Drum as a civilian mail clerk. I am looking at the possibility of a furlough for as long as it takes for Congress to reach an agreement. It could be days or it could be weeks, but regardless of how long, I am more concerned at how much. How much will this affect my family? How much will it hurt us financially? The uncertainty is maddening as I, and my fellow federal workers, watch the...

With just five days left before a government shutdown, federal workers are pressing lawmakers to cut a deal that will keep the government open for business. The stakes are high. If lawmakers fail to pass some kind of spending bill by the end of Friday, hundreds of thousands of government employees are likely to be furloughed, and their paychecks stopped. The National Treasury Employees Union and the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represent a combined 260,000 workers, announced Monday they have asked their members to call lawmakers and encourage them to strike a deal.

Here's your eye-popping statistic of the day, courtesy Stephen Losey at Federal Times: Does job performance play a factor in employee raises and step increases? Unions defending the General Schedule say yes. But the latest numbers say clearly no. Only 737 out of more than 1.2 million GS employees — or one in every 1,698 — were denied a regularly scheduled step increase and accompanying raise in 2009 because of poor performance, according to data provided by the Office of Personnel Management at Federal Times' request. That equates to a 0.06 percent denial rate, which is far lower than any...

COLUMBUS, N.M. (KRQE) - Federal documents state a gun smuggling operation allegedly run by three public officials from a tiny New Mexico border town had ties to Mexican drug cartels and some of the weapons were used in several murders. Last week, federal agents raided Columbus in Luna County arresting Mayor Eddie Espinoza, Village Trustee Blas Gutierrez and Chief of Police Angelo Vega, along with several others. In total, 11 people are accused of smuggling guns into the Mexican cities of Cíudad Juarez and Palomas. Palomas sits just across the border from Columbus. For the first time the federal arresting...

When Erin McFarlane looks at public workers, she sees lucrative pension benefits she doesn't ever expect to get. And it makes her mad. "I don't think that a federal employee or government employee is worth any more than anybody else who does their job and does it well," said the Slinger, Wis., woman. She's been working a couple of bartending jobs since January, when she was laid off from her job at a Harley Davidson plant after almost a decade. She's not alone in seeing public servants as public enemies in some ways. It's a case of pension envy.

Global Economy? 23 Facts Which Prove That Globalism Is Pushing The Standard Of Living Of The Middle Class Down To Third World Levels From now on, whenever you hear the term "the global economy" you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class. Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system. Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do. Therefore, the massive global corporations that...

<p>The vitriol from protesting Wisconsin workers towards the Kochs emerged quickly and intensely. Signs ranging between lame and vulgar (often both) dot the public-union marches.</p>

112 - Letter on the Resolution of Federation of Federal Employees Against Strikes in Federal Service August 16, 1937 Franklin D. Roosevelt 1937 Font Size: Report Typo Share The American Presidency Project Promote Your Page Too My dear Mr. Steward: As I am unable to accept your kind invitation to be present on the occasion of the Twentieth Jubilee Convention of the National Federation of Federal Employees, I am taking this method of sending greetings and a message. Reading your letter of July 14, 1937, I was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which...

House Republicans have passed legislation to fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year which ends on September 30th. The budget passed after an all-night session Friday that went into early Saturday morning. The good news for federal employees is that amendments proposed to HR 1, the continuing resolution bill which had about 600 proposed amendments, did not include proposed amendments to withhold funding for within-grade increases or for promotions of federal employees.

Does anyone here think that running a business from home is going to be the new way that businesses are run and how do you think this will affect hiring policies?

Law enforcement are now searching for Democratic senators boycotting a Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair plan Thursday in an attempt to bring the lawmakers to the floor to allow Republicans to move forward on the bill. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said that Democrats were "not showing up for work" and that police were searching for them to bring them to the floor. He said the last time such an action had happened was in the 1990s and said he was not sure how much authority law enforcement officials would have to compel Democrats to show up....

Yesterday we noted the details of a bill introduced by Wisconsin's new Tea Party Republican Governor Scott Walker that would increase payments from public sector employees while eliminating collective bargaining powers for unions (including teachers)—while also introducing unprecedented executive powers to terminate state employees with little due process. In passing, Walker mentioned plans to call in the National Guard, if necessary. It's an announcement that rankled many (maybe intentionally), including the 100,000-member "voice of America's 21st century patriots" organization VoteVets: "Veterans are strongly objecting to Governor Scott Walker's inappropriate threat…."

Washington (CNN) - House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday if some federal workers lose jobs because of Republican-proposed spending cuts, "so be it." But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was quick to say "not so be it." "Over the last two years since President Obama has taken office, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs and if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it," Boehner said during a news conference with reporters at the Republican National Committee. "We're broke! It's time for us to get serious about how we're spending the nation's money." Boehner,...

As state governments look for ways to cut spending and curb growing pension costs, unions fighting to turn the tide of public opinion and stop attempts to pare down wages, benefits and collective bargaining rights for public workers, the Wall Street Journal reports. Leaders of the American Federation of Government employees are asking members to increase their contributions to the organization's PAC fund. Meanwhile, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, is devoting its political heft towards fighting plans to cut public worker compensation in states like New York and Ohio

On February 8th members of the American Federation of Government Employees picketed outside the Capitol demanding more taxpayer dollars for their already bloated salary and benefits. We caught up with AFGE President John Gage who told us those who say we should control federal spending are "mentally retarded". Tell Mr. Gage you believe cutting spending is actually very sane at http://RemoveGage.com

MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker will propose removing nearly all public employee collective bargaining rights to help plug a $3.6 billion budget hole, a Republican briefed on the governor's plan told The Associated Press on Thursday. Walker will propose a change in state law to remove public employees' ability to negotiate on any issue except salary, according to the person, who was in Walker's closed-door briefing with members of the state Senate on Thursday but spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to release the information. The Republican governor also will refinance state debt to...

Yesterday, the Deparment of Health and Human Services announced it had granted more than 500 new waivers to Obamacare's requirement that health plans have annual limits of no less than $750,000. This annual limit requirement climbs to $1.25 million next year and then to $2 million. The reason these exemptions from the law are needed is that Obamacare forces all health insurance consumers to over-insure themselves and pay high premiums as a result. Without the waivers, many companies, non-profits and unions would simply drop their health plans.

Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Hills, is preparing a package of pension reform bills she said must be addressed before taking up taxes. Among her reforms is legislation requiring all new state employees to enter 401(k)-style benefit plans. "We want reforms in place before there's any discussion about tax increases," said Walters, the GOP's nominee in the fall for state treasurer who was trounced by incumbent Bill Lockyer. "I do know there's not support at all to even put it on the ballot without significant pension reforms." Brown has proposed cutting $12.5 billion in expenditures and asking voters to extend for...

MINNEAPOLIS -- If you are a woman, you should be extremely thin; if you are a man, you should be big and strong. And while we’ve grown accustomed to seeing studies that such stereotypes play out in the workplace — overweight and obese women, for example, have a harder time ascending the career staircase — a recent study has found that a worker’s girth can have an appreciable impact on the size of their paycheck. The study found that thin women are paid significantly more than their average-size counterparts, while heavier women make less. Skinnier-than-average men, on the other hand,...

Uncle Sam wants you -- to work for the federal government. Government agencies need to add about 193,000 new employees to fill "mission critical" jobs in many fields in the next two years, according to a report from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that seeks to revitalize the federal government. That’s good news for job seekers who have the patience and stamina to plow through the cumbersome federal hiring process.

Today is the day to say thanks to an unsung group in the Air Force: civilian employees. The Air Force wouldn’t run as smoothly if it weren’t for those 173,013 dedicated workers. They perform an incredible range of duties, from managing information technology systems to maintaining aircraft. Civilian employees are going to face tougher times in the coming year. They’re looking at a two-year pay freeze that President Obama wants to impose to reduce the federal deficit. Some will fight that battle with the help of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union, and professional societies; others, though, have...

Mark Hemingway: America's public pension crisis has tragic consequences By: Mark Hemingway 12/26/10 8:05 PM When the police found the body of the town's 58-year-old retired fire marshal, the lights had been turned off in his house and he had no running water. He had no money to pay his bills and he was too proud to accept help from his neighbors. Perhaps because he was so proud, the New York Times was polite enough not to use the fire marshal's name in their account of his death. Welcome to Pritchard, Ala., where the public employee pension checks just stopped...

This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry. Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.