I don’t really understand why paying government workers a living wage is a bad thing here?
I am not familiar with the statistics in Europe, but do government employees really make 2x as much as private sector? And if so, are they really doing 1/10th of the work? Those numbers seem absurd.
“Inefficient” bureaucracy, and a well-paid work force, does not equal corruption.
government employees rarely make more than private employees.
what they are getting mixed up is that some tenured positions get paid about 2x that of a new employee, because there are still some old contracts around that are simply much better than newer one in terms of pay raises over time.
and those older government contracts frequently include provisions that make these employees contracts impossible to terminate, resulting in some government employees that simply sit out their time on a stupidly inflated salary that nobody can fire…yes, that’s as bad as it sounds, but those contracts are, as far as im aware, no longer being offered anywhere, and the last ones to get those contracts are going to age out into retirement very soon. most are already retired.
it’s not related to corruption at all either, these contracts used to be standard in many governments all over the world, europe just happened to have some of the cushiest jobs associated with them…
but it is true that these employees generally contributed a LOT to governmental inefficiencies…which is why they’re no longer available.
what they are getting mixed up is that some tenured positions get paid about 2x that of a new employee, because there are still some old contracts around that are simply much better than newer one in terms of pay raises over time.
I’m not confusing anything. Even as lately as 10 and 5 years ago, internal wages for EU-staff (I’m talking about EU itself, not nation states) were easily 2x the agency staff wages, when all the benefits are included. And yes, internal staff is by all accounts unfirable except in grossly egregious situations. It’s just that permanent positions like this a lot of times go through a what I call a “hazing” period, where the to-be-internal has to go through multiple “short term hiring” cycles, before getting a permanent contract.
alright, then we’re talking about slightly different things: i was talking exclusively about the similar kind of government contracts…those are, afaik, almost entirely gone.
the EU contracts i know nothing about, but it’s gonna create the same problems if they’re structured similarly to the local governmental ones…
I’ve worked a lot in the EU public sector and I generally don’t have a problem with paying people a living wage, but is constantly happening within the EU bureaucracy is that the ones that are “internals” don’t do enough work (if at all), so they end up outsourcing to local agencies which then pay people the bare minimum they can get away with to do the job the internals won’t or can’t do. And yes, it’s easily 2x if one includes all the benefits EU workers get.
I wouldn’t mind if they just got more money than the agencies, but I do mind that they think they’re superior to the agency staff and often treat said staff like second class citizens, if they’re not acting like petty tyrants even.
Finally my corruption comment was independent of my bureaucracy comment, not following from it.
I don’t really understand why paying government workers a living wage is a bad thing here?
I am not familiar with the statistics in Europe, but do government employees really make 2x as much as private sector? And if so, are they really doing 1/10th of the work? Those numbers seem absurd.
“Inefficient” bureaucracy, and a well-paid work force, does not equal corruption.
government employees rarely make more than private employees.
what they are getting mixed up is that some tenured positions get paid about 2x that of a new employee, because there are still some old contracts around that are simply much better than newer one in terms of pay raises over time.
and those older government contracts frequently include provisions that make these employees contracts impossible to terminate, resulting in some government employees that simply sit out their time on a stupidly inflated salary that nobody can fire…yes, that’s as bad as it sounds, but those contracts are, as far as im aware, no longer being offered anywhere, and the last ones to get those contracts are going to age out into retirement very soon. most are already retired.
it’s not related to corruption at all either, these contracts used to be standard in many governments all over the world, europe just happened to have some of the cushiest jobs associated with them…
but it is true that these employees generally contributed a LOT to governmental inefficiencies…which is why they’re no longer available.
I’m not confusing anything. Even as lately as 10 and 5 years ago, internal wages for EU-staff (I’m talking about EU itself, not nation states) were easily 2x the agency staff wages, when all the benefits are included. And yes, internal staff is by all accounts unfirable except in grossly egregious situations. It’s just that permanent positions like this a lot of times go through a what I call a “hazing” period, where the to-be-internal has to go through multiple “short term hiring” cycles, before getting a permanent contract.
alright, then we’re talking about slightly different things: i was talking exclusively about the similar kind of government contracts…those are, afaik, almost entirely gone.
the EU contracts i know nothing about, but it’s gonna create the same problems if they’re structured similarly to the local governmental ones…
I’ve worked a lot in the EU public sector and I generally don’t have a problem with paying people a living wage, but is constantly happening within the EU bureaucracy is that the ones that are “internals” don’t do enough work (if at all), so they end up outsourcing to local agencies which then pay people the bare minimum they can get away with to do the job the internals won’t or can’t do. And yes, it’s easily 2x if one includes all the benefits EU workers get.
I wouldn’t mind if they just got more money than the agencies, but I do mind that they think they’re superior to the agency staff and often treat said staff like second class citizens, if they’re not acting like petty tyrants even.
Finally my corruption comment was independent of my bureaucracy comment, not following from it.