When talking base salary, my experience in from 12 years in IT has been that salary is very comparable in private/public sector when looking at comparable job descriptions. With that said.......health insurance, vacation, and retirement is drastically different. In addition, productivity is very different as well. When I lived in PA, the entire state government decided to outsource their IT support call centers to the company I worked for, because they were unable to provide the SLA guarantee, end user satisfaction, and weren't able to handle the call volume per FTE that we were able to. When we had employees that didn't produce, we fired them. They could not, and I was sitting in the room with the CIO of the PA DPW when he said this was a big part of the reason why they had to allow a private organization to provide this service to his department. I was also there when he said they simply could not provide the service for the amount of $$$ we were able to. His cost was too high. In the private sector, for retirement it's usually a 3-5% match into a 401k or IRA, 80% coverage on healthcare, and 1 week vacation for your first 5 years, with 2 weeks vacation after that. Public sector was a retirement that was anywhere from 50% to 75% of your FAS (average of highest 3 years of consecutive pay), along with healthcare 100% paid before and after retirement, and ridiculous amounst of vacation. My best bud now has roughly 12 years with the state in NY, and he's got 6 weeks of paid vacation. Big difference if you look at the real cost of those public/private employees. There is more to the equation than base salary, and anyone that has been around both and worked in both environments knows it. My wife was one of the 15,000 public school teachers laid off in NY over the last two years. Actually she got cut 2x times, one time she was cut in her tenure year, and then got cut again the following year. It was simply a seniority and lack of budget thing. She now works at a private school. She took about a 5% pay cut in salary, and now has to pay into a 401k with a 3% match, vs having guaranteed retirement income and health insurance after age 55. To be honest, despite the lack of retirement, and despite the small income cut, we are both much happier. I'm confident that if we work hard and save our $$$, we are in much better control of our retirement situation than if we were to trust the state to provide that for us.
I am employeed by the local county government and my wife by the public school system. We make average salaries for our area and have been in the "system" for over a decade. I think we kind of have it "right" in our county in terms of public employee compensation. We have not had a raise or cost of living increase in three years and I can completely understand.
I'd love to be able to bid on jobs like this. I'd make a lot of money. I'd save the state a lot of money. Where's the rub? Insert anything in there from the street plowing Bruce mentioned......all the way to educating our children.
I worked for EDS when we stroke the state of MI into a deal The former Gov who signed the deal is now on the board of EDS and the state has an over priced IT work IMO. Some jobs are better suited for the private sector some are not. I work in the private sector and I can tell you I do not give a rats ass what others make. It's not my business, if I wanted to work for the state I would get a job for them.
Not my business, they got the job an the employer agreed to pay them. Just like banks, if a bank is stupid enough to pay some moron 15 million to be the CEO, I can put my money in a credit union For state govements, if I don't like the way things are being run I have two options. 1. Move 2. Vote them out I choose option 2 these days, why I voted for the nerd in MI
We need to get back to producing things! Government jobs don't make money, they cost money. We need to focus on innovation and manufacturing in order to boost our economy.
I won't delve into this too much for obvious reasons, but I will comment that I'm happy to see Bruce and Germ's takes on public school budgetary cuts, and more importantly, major pension overhauls. Public education positions aren't all the rosy pictures the public and politicians try to make it out to be. Strict cut and dry cuts in the wrong places will do much more harm than good in the long run. Is the system flawed? Sure is, but the fix isn't as easy as some make it out to be.
X2. Most people couldnt hack in the public school system, no matter what they say. In Pa state employee salaries make up approximately 3% of the budget. When they revamp the welfare system i wont complain about someone touching my contract. Probably a very small piece of the pie but some of the contracts the state has with private companies really burn me. We can only buy from certain places. Desk, chairs, auto parts, car washes, etc... anything that needs to be purchased has to be bought for 4-5x the price from certain suppliers.
Or it has to do with management? My point is if these people in charge of public sectors ran a private business in the same manner, they'd be out of business in a heartbeat. But... they have the taxpayers (consumers) to lean on. We don't have a choice. We just get taxed to offset everything. You can't just tax your regulars in a private sector business. They'd stop coming. Just gets irritating looking at the mismanagement of resources and money and the free wheeling way they go about things.
I'll feel differently, when they show me a direct correlation (or, even an indirect) -- results to increased money spent.
Ok with me. Another example (out of a zillion) I know a guy that works for the city. He does the trash routes. He was telling me they get paid for an 8 hour day no matter how fast they finish their runs. He went on to say that there's been times they got it done in 4 hours and most of the time 6. HE CAN'T REMEMBER IT EVER TAKING 8 HOURS! to me this should prove to the city manager that it can be done in less time or with less employees. They've already proved it! But yet... day after day after day after day we pay our taxes to have it done in the manner it is being done. How many thousands of dollars does that amount to in a year of unproductive time? I'm paying a dude to play golf because he finished his trash run quicker than expected? Unreal.
Kinda ironic....I wonder how many guys *****in here are posting on this very subject while at work???? Makes ya wonder...........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PkuTm-ON904 Love this dude...........hope he makes it to the White House.
A great quote on atlasmans YouTube link.... LMAO!!!!!!!! This guy is a FAT UNHEALTHY PERSON, THERE IS NO WAY HE CAN HANDLE ANYTHING...hE TALKS SO BIG and yet, he CAN'T CONTROL HIMSELF.... i like his fake self esteem. I want him to handle his own food price budget, from overeating...i don't want any advice from this guy on any budget spending.
I'm on my 20 minute post lunch break. Pretty wore out after the 2 hourse i had to work after my hour lunch break and 20 minute coffee break. I think I may take a personal day tommorow to recover. Actually I only have 6 of those left so I'll have to make it a sick day instead. My comp time is really piling up. Thinking about unloading that, doing some swaps, using my vacation time, what's left of my sick days and the rest of my personal days so maybe I dont' have to work until around thanksgiving or so. Golly I can't wait until I'm 55 so I can retire at 75% salary so I don't have to deal with all this figuring anymore.
A real funny part of this thread is that the guys in the private sector think they are inherently superior to the public sector in their management skills. The fact of the matter is, NO you are not. Many persons in the public sector are subject to a code of behavior and face variables that many people in private sector jobs do not. So please, oh superior millionaire private sector folks, take your condescending and quite frankly, false sense of self elsewhere because you are not fooling anyone. It gets real old hearing from guys who think they are god's gift to the world and everyone else is slacking and stupid. NY. Do you run a million dollar company? If so, why are you working 16 hour days? I mean if you are such a great manager then you should be paying someone else to do most of your job and you could be living the high life.
