Federal Government & Union spar over returning to office

[Remius]

It's not a stat / not meant to be strictly literal. It's from my earlier post where I quipped that the public sector is a place where 5% of the people do 95% of the work. It's a play off of Price's Law, except my personal experience says in government it's much worse.

So not an actual metric beyond opinion and anecdotal. Hard to discuss a number and your follow on points when you have nothing factual to back it up with. I’m not saying there isn’t dead weight. My experience also anecdotal in 3 different departments is like anywhere else you have 10% of your people that take up 90% of your time. On any team I’ve been on there have been some underperformers. But nowhere near the made up numbers you are providing. I’ll accept that it’s hyperbolic or at least concede that where ever you worked in the PS that it was probably a really bad place.

The issue with the deadweight for me is no one deals with them. They tend to move on before anything is done, get promoted out or just get shuffled off to be someone else’s problem. Most of us with any real time in the PS or CAF has seen this a few times.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Common sense suggests the first cut for a model of performers and non-performers should, as for many human attributes, resemble a bell curve.

 

[Furniture]

The issue with the deadweight for me is no one deals with them. They tend to move on before anything is done, get promoted out or just get shuffled off to be someone else’s problem. Most of us with any real time in the PS or CAF has seen this a few times.

I have family and friends in the private sector who complain about the same things... almost as if it's a pretty normal thing when multiple humans work in a place.

The movie Office Space wasn't made about public servants, and it seemed to resonate with a lot of people who work in offices...

 

[Colin Parkinson]

And you're suggesting that it's isolated to those levels then? If the executive and senior managerial levels are incompetent and lack any form of accountability, I should have no reason to be concerned that this might trickle down into and infect the rest of the public service.....?



I say again, I should have no reason to be concerned that this lack of accountability might trickle down into and infect the rest of the public service....?



Yep, being a 5%'er sucks, but I'm glad someone on here is finally admitting out loud that there's "more than the fair share" of O2 thieves in the public service (i.e. the public service has disproportionate too many O2 thieves, yet higher pay?), rather than trying to pretend the patently obvious is not obvious... particularly worth an eyeroll when it's done towards people who worked in the CAF so literally saw it for themselves anyway.



You asked "why is it that..." and got your answer, if you'd prefer to simply believe it's because people are "jealous," then don't ask - I don't really care if you're "persuaded" and ps I am definitely not jealous



Do you have any evidence that the pension benefits of public servants was a commonplace in the years gone by?



That's an interesting spin. You think the track record shows that compensation was better throughout history, but it's been stripped away, and simply at a faster rate in the private sector?

This whole thing reminds me of Darnell Nurse's contract with the Oilers. He got paid way too much and can't live up to the contact. I would never blame Nurse for signing that contract - any player in the league would have signed it. However, when Darnell Nurse gets criticized for his contract, he actually steps up and plays a little better.... and he sure isn't refusing to come to work because he hasn't got a fair enough shake just yet.

I will speak to that "Higher pay". Our clerical staff is well paid (At the time a CR3 made as much as a CCG Deckhand). However anyone with technical training was underpaid compared to their industry counterpart. It became very difficult to find Ship Inspector, as pay for someone with a Ocean going Marine Ticket was way under the industry standard. It used to be that government employees were under paid comparative to industry, but had good benefits, pension and stability. So it was a tradeoff. With pensions and stability in question, it makes it very hard to get good people on the technical side.

 

[brihard]

I will speak to that "Higher pay". Our clerical staff is well paid (At the time a CR3 made as much as a CCG Deckhand). However anyone with technical training was underpaid compared to their industry counterpart. It became very difficult to find Ship Inspector, as pay for someone with a Ocean going Marine Ticket was way under the industry standard. It used to be that government employees were under paid comparative to industry, but had good benefits, pension and stability. So it was a tradeoff. With pensions and stability in question, it makes it very hard to get good people on the technical side.

Pensions for the federal public service are rock solid, they’re as gold plated as they come. Given what you just said about the difficulty in attracting and maintaining technical experts, are you suggesting job stability for those willing to work PS as tech experts is lacking?

 

[Brad Sallows]

Pensions for the federal public service are rock solid, they’re as gold plated as they come.

On that...public employees ought to receive an annual statement of the value of their pension, with a bottom-line number of what it would cost them to buy it with a lump sum at whatever their expected retirement age is. The value ought to include the value of cost-of-living indexing, whether capped or unlimited. The value of unlimited indexing ought to be based on a long history of real cost-of-living increases, not some estimate based on expectations of what the BoC might do to control inflation.

They can do their own arithmetic to figure out how long and how much they'd have to save working elsewhere, to come up with that lump sum.

 

[McG]

So not an actual metric beyond opinion and anecdotal.

It it even anecdote. It is pure hyperbole.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Pensions for the federal public service are rock solid, they’re as gold plated as they come. Given what you just said about the difficulty in attracting and maintaining technical experts, are you suggesting job stability for those willing to work PS as tech experts is lacking?

As I understand it, they are no longer offering indexed pensions for people hired after a certain date, but can't seem to find any link to that? But it was a very hot topic when I was in. For someone looking in and weighing their choices the "We can't afford the PS pension plan" statements they hear and the reality of how hard it can be to actually get a indeterminate position which will offer stability, the shine comes off as people dig deeper. Going from $150,000 to $100,000 or less, you better be getting something out of it.