How did we get here?
How did Federal employees become the bad guys?
How did we get here?
Now, the statement above could be a laundry list of things, but for now I’m going to focus on the idea of the federal employee as lazy, incompetent, boogey man. The workforce a large swath of my fellow citizens are cheering on as the blood bath of firings across agencies continues.
Let me let you in on a dirty little secret – most federal agencies are grossly understaffed (even as their mission sets and expectation continue to grow), under-paid (by as much as 25% to their civilian counterparts, federal pay tables are also available online, link at the bottom) and regularly facing the insults of a population they are only there to serve (seriously, go look up any social media account of any federal agency and spend just a few minutes in the comments section and tell me what you see).
Even within the federal employee ranks I hear such comments as “Yeah, there’s waste and bloat across the federal government but not at my agency.” I always have the same thought – point to it. Show me where you think the bloat and waste is (I’d ask you to do the same thing and then consider honestly is it waste because you don’t like it?). Typically this comes down to that one employee that one time that gave them crappy service or was skating on their duties.
Which is to say there are some inefficiencies in government employment and we can start by how insanely difficult it is to terminate poor performing employees. Don’t – for the love of God – get me started on the abysmal hiring process for federal employment. With no empirical data, I’m going to guess that problematic employees in the federal services is probably on par with those in the private sector. The main difference being its far easier to fire a private sector employee – so start there. I’m also going to say the VAST majority of public employees are some of the hardest working, doing it for the love of service folks you’re ever going to meet.
We have processes that need fixed, not whole agencies fired.
Just stop and think about this for a moment, we’re not getting stock options, we’re not getting compensated well, and there is roughly a million firewalls in the way of CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) that make it nearly impossible for but the most devious to benefit from their position – I’m going to come back to this … no shit we host bake sales, see side note at end.
So why do we do it? As I said earlier, for most of us, it’s a deep sense of service to the nation’s citizens. We care about the parks we keep clean; we care that justice is served, that water is clean, that air is breathable, that species survive, and that on a given Sunday you can load up the family and take part in your birthright of the nation’s Public Lands.
And yet – you hate us. You cheer on as thousands lose their job with the stroke of a pen, as entire department are shuttered, as protections, typically put in place AFTER a catastrophe (looking at you Cuyahoga River), are whittled away.
How did this happen? How did so many of my fellow citizens come to see federal employees as the bad guys?
The side note I mentioned – so it’s not uncommon working in the private sector for employees to be sporting company swag; jackets, water bottles, hats, you name it. One hundred percent correct, federal agencies cannot spend a single dime of appropriated funds (funds given to the agency by Congress) for such things. Instead, most of the agencies have an employee association that holds bake sales or other such fund-raising events to provide their employees something similar or they pay for it themselves. There’s nothing wrong with either, just another example of differences between private and public employment.