Apolitical Staples

I’ll stand up for the public service a little. The ones I worked with did work hard and did earn their paycheques. A person’s work ‘value’ is different for everyone. It seems to me that people earning less than the ‘average’ public servant will definately feel they are overpaid. While those making similar salaries or more might feel they are making the right amount of money. Are there lazy public servants? Sure, just like there are lazy members of all jobs. Only problem is public servants are in the public eye (justifiably too). The problem I have is the PSAC union and their constant strike threats (that and their non-protection or caring about new members). Seems odd to me that the public service goes on strike and denies services to the same people who will end up paying their salaries through our taxes.

‘Of course I get more benefits and stuff, but I think I deserve them. I do a lot of work, and it’s stressful,’ public servant Shannon Steele says.

‘Our members work in a hostile work environment where they are subjected to discrimination and harassment,’ said Patty Ducharme, vice president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

The “stress and harrasment” they get from working in the government … could that be because the government is barely doing anything that anyone really wants or needs, so they’re constantly having to justify there existence to hostile taxpayers?

The private sector is totally different. You’re making or selling something for someone who is voluntarily paying you for what you do. People working in the private sector are more happy doing what they do because they get instant feedback if they’re screwing up (people stop buying what they sell), and they have a million choices of alternative jobs if they ever feel unhappy. The most unhappy workers in the private sector are the ones stuck in a union-protected job which pays way more than they could make in non-union job (which is essentially a government-protected job since the business is forced to do business with the union), and workers stuck in places where there are very few jobs, which is usually because some level of government, or all three working tag-team, have made it impossible for other businesses to get established.

Government is the land of unhappy people. The salaries are so high that you’re pretty much married to your job. The public is forced at gunpoint to pay your salary, whether they want your “services” or not, so they’re always going to be asking very tough questions about what you do. The goals and expectations of government programs are so flaky and politicized that it’s never really clear exactly what they should be doing, let alone whether they’re doing it well. In fact they’re motivated to do their job badly. If, for example, welfare for poor provinces really was “a hand up not a handout” then the people in the federal government who concern themselves with the plight of the poor, downtrodden Noofie would soon be out of work. Government thrives on poverty, chaos and war, and shrivels up in peace and prosperity.

And in a department which has no real goals to meet (other than to spend the maximum allocated in their budget every year, plus as much more as their minister can lobby for), then it’s easy for the more ambitious, political and nasty people to have their way. If a widget-making company has a bad boss then it’ll be obvious when employee turnover skyrockets, productivity plummets and profits fall. Things tend to be fixed quickly (unless of course they score government subsidies and they don’t care about profits). When a shark is running rampant in the government, he usually wins because the people are too attached to their juicy salary to quit, and there are no concrete goals against which to measure loss of productivity.

The ones I worked with did work hard and did earn their paycheques.

I suggest that you scoot over to the StatsCan website and check out how much faster the average weekly earnings of federal employees is growing compared to non-government. I see that their salaries grew from 2002-2006 by about 15%, but the schmucks who pay for their “services” are only making about 10% more. And the “servants” now earn over 50% more (not counting benefits) than their “masters”. Do they not only deserve ‘way more money than other people, but are their amazing attributes of intelligence and hard work actually growing much faster than everyone else’s? If so, what are you measuring? How many tax dollars their ministry burns through every year?

A person’s work ‘value’ is different for everyone.

Of course it is. That’s why the free market is best and big government sucks. Government dictates values to people. In the free market you decide for yourself where to blow the money you earn.

Ha! While I was typing my rant above, I was remembering different instances of bad bosses/unhappy employees I’ve witnessed over the years in both government and private sector jobs.

I remember one case of a bullying boss in the private sector. It took a surpisingly long time (for the private sector) for the boss to get moved, but in the meantime all the people who were bullied either quit or transferred to other jobs, and every one of them did extremely well - one even became a multi-millionaire when they landed a successful startup just before it took off.

Then I remembered an unhappy federal government department in which I spent some time many moons ago … I googled a name … and I found (what else) a long, whiny grievance application, with many appeals, a litany of the unhappinesses one of my former co-workers endured in different departments where they were allegedly subjected to all kinds of harrasment, bullying and discrimination. I suspect a lot of the stress was self-inflicted, by jeesus cripes, why put up with so much crap?

“I see that their salaries grew from 2002-2006 by about 15%, but the schmucks who pay for their “services” are only making about 10% more.”

That’s true, however, keep in mind that their salaries were frozen during most of the 1990’s.

The “stress and harrasment” they get from working in the government … could that be because the government is barely doing anything that anyone really wants or needs, so they’re constantly having to justify there existence to hostile taxpayers?

No, in fact it is often times just the opposite. Firefighters, nurses, cops, teachers all make good money. All of them are in the public service and God bless em. They deal with a hell of a lot of stress on the job.

Also, other public servants have to deal with jackasses like Anonymous, who come at them like they are criminals, just because they work in the public sector. Only proctologists deal with bigger assholes (and in Canada, proctologists are public servants too).

Firefighters, nurses, cops, teachers all make good money … They deal with a hell of a lot of stress on the job.

These are only a small fraction of government employees. Behind them are armies of bureaucrats. But for front-line jobs as well as for pencil-pushers the questions are the same - Do they provide services which people actually need? Are they providing the services effectively? And are they paid adequately? All of these questions are quickly answered in the free market where people vote every day by how they spend their time and their money, but they are never answered in the government because of it is the domain of monopolies and compulsion.

As for having to take lip from anonymous jackazzes … I recommend that you quit and rejoin the free market. That way you don’t have to put up with any jackazzes, and no one has to hire you if they think you’re an overpaid knucklehead.

Sinister Greg, the public servants you are referring to are not federal.

The solution is to remove barriers to private competition with public services. Unionized civil service workers mostly enjoy the privilege of monopoly of labour while working for a monopoly supplier, with the additional bonus of occasional elections of blatantly pro-union governments in some jurisdictions.

Civil service workers don’t suffer uniquely high levels of stress or necessarily deal with more poorly-behaved customers. Reported measures of stress depend on the subjective opinion of the person reporting. People who can’t handle stress tend to seek secure situations. A civil service worker’s unbearable stress may just be a private worker’s everyday matter-of-course because of the types of people who gravitate to certain employment milieux.