Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Dad would just stuff a recruit in a locker and throw him down the stairs as a form of light corrective action. But he was always just a softie.

 Frazzled wrote:
Awesome. Half of them should immediately quit. Lets leave those positions unfilled and reduce budgets accordingly. It will be a good start.

Most agencies are already overburdened. There's a reason the FBI can't get to every case, and why private prisons exist (beyond a very good lobby). There are definitely a number of employees that could go, but that is true of just about any employer.

Medicare Fraud is a billion dollar industry. Billions in wasted money. But there aren't enough federal investigators. Social Security fraud is another billion dollar industry. Again, not enough investigators. IRS? Not enough auditors. But sure, go ahead, cut those work forces by half and see how much money you "save". Good plan.

 djones520 wrote:

 Rented Tritium wrote:
Not being able to fire government workers is actually something that was caused by the anti-government crowd.

They put in place a TON of rules about hiring to prevent the government from growing, but now when you fire someone who sucks, you have to go through 6 months of red tape to rehire. If there is a hiring freeze, then you can't rehire at all.

If you actually LET THEM HIRE PEOPLE like NORMAL BOSSES, they would be more willing to fire people.

Ummm... from my knowledge of the process, that's not at all how it works. The contract pretty much makes it impossible to fire. When we do get an open slot, hiring someone is pretty damn easy and doesn't take much time at all.

Not even vaguely correct. It is in fact easy to fire a federal employee, AS LONG AS THE PROPER STEPS ARE FOLLOWED. The problem is that, like many public sector places, management is usually lazy as all hell. They don't want to have to take the time to write up employees, put them on a performance improvement plan, and then when nothing improves fire them.

Those proper steps taking years. How many bad govenrment employees do you know that were let go?

 Frazzled wrote:
Those proper steps taking years. How many bad govenrment employees do you know that were let go?

6 months if everything is done correctly. How many bad government employees do I personally know that have been let go? 1. Then again, I only know about 20 federal employees, mostly low level grunts like me who do actual work. Again, it all comes down to management, which just like in the private sector, tends to be the weak link of any office.

Six months. Thats impressive, but not in a good way. Why not immediately?
How many layoffs?

 Frazzled wrote:
Those proper steps taking years. How many bad govenrment employees do you know that were let go?

Just like they do in most lawsuite conscious companies.

The HR process at my job to terminate someone is not swift and involves a lot fo documentation.

I know, I've had to "promote people to customer" on multiple occasions.

Not here.

 Frazzled wrote:
Six months. Thats impressive, but not in a good way. Why not immediately?
How many layoffs?

Depends on the severity of the infraction. There was a NASA guy who was immediately terminated and sent to jail for a conflict of interest charge in the amount of $30,000. The person I knew wasn't breaking laws or putting the agency's mission in jeopardy, she was just lazy. So they told her to shape up or ship out. she stayed lazy, she got shipped out.

When I was a contractor (er mer gerd, private sector!) it would have taken a verbal warning, written warning, 3 follow up infractions, an improvement plan, and then a further infraction for me to be fired, as was my company's policy. When my manager tried to skip steps 1 and 2 and go straight to 3, he wouldn't have been able to fire me.

I think people really overestimate the ease of firing people in the private sector. The movies make it seem so simple "You're fired!" but in reality, there's almost always a procedure in place to fire useless employees, that is actually there to protect the company from lawsuits. Now, just like the federal government, serious enough infractions will cut the red tape pretty easily.

 streamdragon wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Six months. Thats impressive, but not in a good way. Why not immediately?
How many layoffs?

Depends on the severity of the infraction. There was a NASA guy who was immediately terminated and sent to jail for a conflict of interest charge in the amount of $30,000. The person I knew wasn't breaking laws or putting the agency's mission in jeopardy, she was just lazy. So they told her to shape up or ship out. she stayed lazy, she got shipped out.

When I was a contractor (er mer gerd, private sector!) it would have taken a verbal warning, written warning, 3 follow up infractions, an improvement plan, and then a further infraction for me to be fired, as was my company's policy. When my manager tried to skip steps 1 and 2 and go straight to 3, he wouldn't have been able to fire me.

I think people really overestimate the ease of firing people in the private sector. The movies make it seem so simple "You're fired!" but in reality, there's almost always a procedure in place to fire useless employees, that is actually there to protect the company from lawsuits. Now, just like the federal government, serious enough infractions will cut the red tape pretty easily.

+1. The only time I have seen people canned outright inthe Private sector is some serious, serious gak. Theft, assault, sexual harassment, that kind of thing.

Otherwise, it is a long, slow slog of red tape to avoid lawsuit. Even that doesn't always help, because I have been asked to provide the detaisl and notes numerous times to help deal with lawsuits after the firings.

 CptJake wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

IronWarLeg wrote:
Sorry to interrupt the Federal Employee bashing by some, let me explain, as a Federal Employee, what I have gone through since beginning to work for the IRS in 2010:

3 year hiring freeze, resulting in the same night shift since I have been employed. Was told I would be able to change in a year or so, I see my kids during the week about a half hour a day.

3 year pay freeze, whats that Mr. Hood? you have gotten 5.0 out of 5.0 on each of your evaluations? Good Job lets reward you with not a pay increase, but instead were going to take away any bonuses you have ALREADY EARNED AND WERE PROMISED BY CONTRACT so the average joe may only have 5 furlough days instead of 6.

Furlough Days!! Yay for unpaid days off!

We are currently doing the job of 250 call site employees with a full staff of 136~ people. We can not meet expectations with full staffing (meaning 100% attendance) and our call site suffers for it.

Hearing constantly how I am overpaid and have AWESOMESAWCE!!!!!!one! benefits that are SUPER cheap!!! I pay over 400$ a month to insure my family with decent medical and dental, last I checked that's pretty average for a family of 4. I make less than private sector collectors as they are paid on commission, and maybe 1.50 more an hour than those who are straight hourly.

I will be the first to admit I do have good job security as I work collections for the IRS, people always gonna owe, but honestly I would scoop dog crap for the same money.

People LOVE to think how bloated we are and over staffed the federal workforce is, problem is they seem to lump Federal Employees together, where my agency is extremely under manned due to attrition and people leaving for greener pastures, there are other agencys who are not, or whos staffing level has very little impact on their ability to serve the public.

Just quit then.

He also didn't mention the step increases they use to get around the pay freeze... If he didn't get one, he was substandard and his boss let him know it.

Substandard! Nice, As mentioned 3 years running top performance score, I do not get step increases as I have capped in my level of the scale thanks, and a QSI (Quality Step Increase) is a performance award that was "suspended" when the sequester hit, therefore the only way to move up is to go up in the GS scale, which I cant do with the pay freeze.

And nice suggestion Frazz, it crosses my mind every day I go to work. If there was a job available in my area that would take a IT/Radio technician that has been out of the field for a little over 4 years I would quit and go work for them. Problem is that its a wee bit difficult to find a job in the NW part of Washington State that is not a Federal job, that's all there is around where I live. If it were as easy as you make it sound I would quit in a heartbeat and never look back.

I don't want what I said to be a "feel bad for me sob story", I will do what I have to so my family has food and I can pay my mortgage, but its very tiresome being a federal employee at the moment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
Six months. Thats impressive, but not in a good way. Why not immediately?
How many layoffs?

I know of 3 employees in my call site that were fired within a week of their infraction:

1 for pulling up his own file in the IRS system (they fired him the next day)
1 for disrespecting/berating a taxpayer who had threatened suicide over the phone (did it on a Monday, was gone Thursday)
1 for his inability to meet performance standards, this one did take a while to get to the point of being fired for it, but his last 2 did not meet standards, his latest was below standards as well and they canned him the day they gave the evaluation.

People are fired in the IRS, some do take longer than others, but right now its hard to get fired because we are so under staffed they cant afford to let anyone go. The folks above are the only ones fired in our call site in recent memory, everyone else has either left to work in the private sector, retired, or moved to a different agency.

Just so your aware of how all of this has effected the IRS, right now, as we speak, if someone files a fraudulent return using your information to claim a refund (ID Theft) it will take a minimum of 6 months for us to fix it, typically it lasts about a year, and if its a one off case you can forget prosecution.

We have 8 collections call sites around the country, 2 of them have now been pulled full time from the phones to help with ID Theft, before it was even worse than above.

So please, go ahead and cut an additional half of our work force, enjoy waiting at least 3 hours on hold to talk to someone, the IRS will come to a grinding halt, resulting in the next kneejerk reaction to how Federal Employees should be managed.

 CptJake wrote:
He also didn't mention the step increases they use to get around the pay freeze... If he didn't get one, he was substandard and his boss let him know it.

Somehow missed this my first read through of this thread, so I wanted to clarify:

Step Increases are not used "to get around the pay freeze". They are a built in part of the federal employment GS track, and have been for decades. They had nothing to do with the sequester, pay freezes or hiring freezes. They are literally a built in part of our contracts. The flip side, is that we can't just get raises or promotions like you'll sometimes see in the private sector. A contractor friend of mine just told his boss "hey, you need to give me more money or I'm leaving" and they gave him more money. My boss would tell me not to let the door hit me...

Oh I could cut a lot in the IRS and increase your call center staff to give you more help. That wouldn't be hard. Plus you'd have easier parking.



Thats the problem. government likes to cut either across the board or customer focused areas to maximize the pain. Its intentional.

 Valion wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
If you don't like it just quit the country and go somewhere without federal employees

That seems drastic. What's wrong with the private sector, aside from the fact that you actually can get fired for poor performance?

Performance has nothing to do with getting fired. Lack of brown-nosing - or even just pointing out that the people busy brown-nosing aren't performing at all - has far more to do with it.

 Frazzled wrote:
Oh I could cut a lot in the IRS and increase your call center staff to give you more help. That wouldn't be hard. Plus you'd have easier parking.



Thats the problem. government likes to cut either across the board or customer focused areas to maximize the pain. Its intentional.

Oh yeah, I would cut a lot of stuff, increse the staff at the contact center AND give you all free unicorns! Who can? The Garbageman Can!

I can.

 Frazzled wrote:
Oh I could cut a lot in the IRS and increase your call center staff to give you more help. That wouldn't be hard. Plus you'd have easier parking.



Thats the problem. government likes to cut either across the board or customer focused areas to maximize the pain. Its intentional.

I agree 100%, if the across the board cuts make one party or the other look bad, or have the potential of making the other party look bad, of course they are going to do it, meanwhile we suffer. I like to refer to federal employees, myself included, as "political footballs". Our livelihood depends on whoever is in office and the agenda their party has that day. By the time the sequester ends, in 2021 I believe, the budget the IRS will have to work with will be about $3.00 lol... I kinda hope they have us do Gladiator style death matches for pay raises and pay checks, everyone in my callsite weighs about 400 lbds or is over the age of 60 so I stand a pretty good chance of VICTORY!!

Oh well, I still pack a lunch and go to work, and it pays well enough I can afford a nice car, a nice house and can put food on the table, which is more than can be said for a lot of folks out there. In the big picture I really don't have a lot to complain about but that's never stopped me before!

Oh well, I still pack a lunch and go to work, and it pays well enough I can afford a nice car, a nice house and can put food on the table, which is more than can be said for a lot of folks out there. In the big picture I really don't have a lot to complain about but that's never stopped me before!

There's the motivation to grind on.

 Valion wrote:
That seems drastic. What's wrong with the private sector, aside from the fact that you actually can get fired for poor performance?

Oh look, conservative mythology. That's a fine way to set public policy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
+1. The only time I have seen people canned outright inthe Private sector is some serious, serious gak. Theft, assault, sexual harassment, that kind of thing.

Otherwise, it is a long, slow slog of red tape to avoid lawsuit. Even that doesn't always help, because I have been asked to provide the detaisl and notes numerous times to help deal with lawsuits after the firings.

I actually did a pile of reading years ago on the processes for firing someone in US government. Funny thing is, getting fired in the US public service is still way easier than it is to get fired here in Australia from like any job, private or public. And that's after we've spent the last 10 years making it way easier to get fired.

Thing is, we still gak all over you guys for productivity. I think it's something of a false assumption that making it easier to fire people means that an organisation will start clearing out the useless people. Half the time that guy you know is completely useless is loved by management, and it won't be him that goes. But the guy who makes noise, takes on management to improve their game will end up getting the chop.