Reader responses to Ned on Feds - Pay inequity

DAILY BRIEFING

Reader responses to Ned on Feds - Pay inequity

Here are the responses we have received to the July 31 Ned on Feds column, "Pay inequity "

WOW, You hit the nail right on the head with your analysis of Government Pay Inequity. I have worked for the government for 30 years and have seen a lot of changes, some good, but mostly not good in the areas of pay equity. If I can quote you, "The result is a workforce in which the highest talent is underpaid and the least skilled are paid well in excess of their contribution" is an accurate description of the current pay discrepancy among the new and old employees. My agency is hiring and offering top pay at the end of the pay scale, i.e. GS 12 step 10 with a bonus of $10K - $15K. You are right, the highest talent continues to be underpaid, while newcomers are showered with an explosion of money. This creates resentment and sets up a poor working environment with fellow employees. I can foresee in the near term, that the government worker with the highest talent will no longer be around, and the government will suffer with a bunch of no talent workers, who just happen to be highly paid for what they don't know......

-Bill Spooner
GS12/10 Computer Scientist
Naval Undersea Warfare Center

Gee, Ned, what compassion. I assume you are collecting a government retirement check, but the rest of us federal middle managers, 40-50 years old with kids and mortgages who have dedicated 20 years or so to working for the federal government, need to get with modern times and learn to live pay check to pay check.

Everybody wants cheap entry level workers for about three to five years, then they replace them with the next batch, or else start contracting out overseas.

Government, unlike business, should be concerned with more than the bottom line, efficiency and the almight dollar. If government can't set an example of "humane" downsizing, God forbid what the next private sector period of mergers, realingements, and profit taking is going to look like.

Meanwhile we are busily dismantling all the regulations, protections, and safety nets put in place after the Great Depression because times are good, modern business is "enlightened", and we all know something like that can't happen again.

- Jon Taylor
Dept of Army

I read your article and I have some agreement and much disagreement. The disagreements:

• Management has no responsibility to manage.
• Lack of strategic planning is the employees fault.
• IT folks are like old dogs.
• Young folks know it all.
• Employees do not have enough commitment to their jobs.
• Why do they not fire management when they make bad decisions.
• Why were Cobal programers not available for Y2K??
• Outsourcing is the panacea for all the governments problems.

Agreements:

• 
  
• The humane program to get rid of employees was not humane.
• No strategic planning when people were bought out, retired etc.
• Pay inequity does exist in the IT field.

People are supposed to be our most valuable asset. However that has been lost in translation. My question: How do you expect loyalty when you do not reciprocate that same loyalty you expect?

-Name withheld

I'm confused-what do downsizing, hiring entry-level applicants from colleges and graduate schools, and rehiring/contracting retired COBOL programmers to fix the Y2K problems have to do with each other? Which grad school would they have gotten qualified COBOL programmers from? Would not downsizing agencies have made it any less urgent to rehire qualified COBOL programmers for the Y2K fixes?

Ned seems to think that once you become a federal employee, your brain atrophies and you can't function in "dynamic fields" such as information technology (IT). His assertion that only the young and non-government workforce can possibly have the skills required or that a life-long career hinders the IT field is ludicrous. Training, although sketchy in some federal circles, is available everywhere. Upgrading skills is one of the hallmarks of a good employee.

Also, which elements of the workforce are less essential? Since downsizing was supposed to already have eliminated this segment of the federal workforce, who does Ned expect to curtail. And how does eliminating them provide "just compensation" for the best employees? In case he hasn't noticed, when slots are cut, money is cut. That was the whole idea behind downsizing and privatization-to save money.

-Michelle Zellich
Retired Federal Employee
US Army CECOM Logistic Software Support Center