You see, nothing happens quickly. It doesn't' matter if something NEEDS to happen quickly, it will take however long the state dictates it will take. Take staffing for example. So far as I know, the health care team at the correctional facility I work at hasn't been fully staffed since I got there. From what I understand we should have four RNs in both the North and South side clinics. We should have three RNs for four and five block. We should have a total of nine LPNs for the med rooms between North and South side. This doesn't even get into the administrative assistants and nurses working in the background. Instead of the eleven RNs and nine LPNs we currently have nine RNs and six LPNs.
Much of the time we can reduce our staffing level down to critical levels (four nurses (RN or LPN) for the med rooms, two RNs for four and five block, two RNs for the clinics) on each shift, but we can only do that by adding in a lot of overtime. And when you add in things like calling out because of the snow, sick time, and annual leave, it just gets worse. Now I've only been here for six and a half months, but in that time we've hired only a single RN onto staff. There were two other rounds of hiring, but that was just moving nurses on contract into state jobs. They didn't add any new contract nurses, so we're still understaffed.
And why are we understaffed? It's not because our on site supervisors don't see the problem. It's because the state takes FOREVER to open up positions. Once the position is open they have to advertise it for several weeks before interviews can begin. After the interviews it can take weeks to get approval for the hire. Meanwhile people that have applied (and in some cases already interviewed) are getting hired elsewhere.
All of this leads to frustration and hardship on current staff. Something as simple as moving from eight hour schedules to twelve hour schedules is neigh impossible because we simply don't have the staff to implement it. That's in addition to the frustration of often working alone and getting moved from position to position.
Sadly, this isn't anything new. Government work has almost always had this issue. My father spent his adult life both as a military man and later as a federal postal worker, and he was constantly complaining about similar issues. Back then, however, there were advantages of government work. Pay being first and foremost. Government work would often pay more for similar positions. I know as an RN in his first job, I'm getting paid more per hour than other first time RNs in a hospital. But where that pay discrepancy used to be around 40% more, it's now down to less than 10%.
There also used to be pensions as opposed to 401ks for retirement. I actually had to explain this to my colleague. A pension is a defined benefit. You pay into the system and when you retire you get a set amount of payment back for the remainder of your life. If the employer didn't properly set aside money or invest wisely, then it was their problem... they had to pay you your pension. A 401k on the other hand is a defined contribution. You pay into the system and when you retire you look at the balance of what you've paid in and how it was invested and then figure out what money you have to retire with. If the investment company (or you!) didn't properly set aside enough or invest wisely, then you have less to retire on.
In addition to retirement benefits, there was also healthcare and retirement healthcare, both of which were heads and shoulders above what you could expect form private employment. Now the health care package for state workers is on par with everybody else, and just like everybody else it's constantly being cut back. Retirement healthcare? Well that just doesn't exist now. If I want to have healthcare when I retire I have to put money into a 457 (similar to a 401k) and hope that it's enough to pay for healthcare 30 years in the future.
What will health care cost at that time? I have no idea. So how much should I invest into that fund (a fund which can ONLY be spent on healthcare)? I have no idea. What happens if healthcare becomes universal before then? Then I have a pot of money that I can't spent when I get to the end of my rainbow career.
So what exactly is the advantage of working for a government now? From my standpoint as a 'young' RN, the only advantage I can see is a small amount of extra pay early in my career. The disadvantage sadly is that I'm more or less locked into being a correctional nurse for the remainder of my career and will have to constantly deal with staffing problems. The 'benefits' package is on par with private employment.
I firmly believe that one of the driving issues behind this decline in government work is the constant chipping away at government itself. So many people are constantly wanting to cut government back and give out tax cuts. I don't believe they are doing this for malicious reasons and some in fact believe this is all for the greater good... but I don't think they see how it's filtering down.
On the surface, cutting government back is good. And paying less taxes is something that appeals to almost anybody. Who wouldn't want to keep more of their money. But the more they do this, the more they look at running government like a business. And in my humble opinion government has no business being run like a business. A business at its very core is about making money. Pay as little as you can in creating and delivering your 'product' and earn as much as you can in selling your 'product'.
It's said that market forces will keep businesses honest and good. People simply won't utilize a business that is doing bad things. But consider things like minimum wage and food inspections. Minimum wage is a business looking at their employee and saying "If I could pay you less, I would", and why are there food inspections? Only because the government requires them. Both of these things cost businesses money and if they could cut them out (not do inspections and/or pay their employees less), then they would. Maybe... MAYBE there would be some businesses out there that would step up and do the right thing, but they'd be competing against businesses that are making more profit. They would get less investors, grow slower, and be at constant risk of being bought out by their larger competitors. Businesses wants money.
If you look at businesses with that lens, then why the hell should a government be run like a business? Sure, some CEO elected into office would be good at 'cutting waste', but when there is no profit isn't every single penny spent a waste? Wouldn't a good CEO work his tail off to cut every penny of waste? Once he can't cut any more away he can simply start changing the laws that require the government to provide those very wasteful spending.
While I get to experience this from a government employee's standpoint, I also get to experience this from a citizens standpoint. I live in Michigan and while the country (and world) as a whole experienced (is experiencing) one of the worst recessions ever, Michigan was in recession years before the financial meltdown. We elected in 'The Nerd Governor' Rick Snyder. He was an executive at Gateway Computers and had his own Venture Capital fund before turning his lonely eyes toward government service.
I'm not ready to say he's a horrible governor (although he did make Michigan a Right To Work state). He's a technocrat at heart and while he is still a Republican he tries to fix things through laws and regulations rather than just tear the government down from the inside. One of the first things he did was change the tax code. He removed the small business tax, and reduced taxes on the wealthiest of citizens. To pay for that he started taxing retirees pensions and increased the taxes on the poor. I wasn't happy with the decision, but nothing else had worked before so I was willing to see if this would work. The Republican controlled legislature also went to work at cutting services to reduce costs. If I'm honest though... it did work. This fiscal year Michigan actually has a budget surplus. The state is bringing in more money than they are spending. So naturally we can start spending that money on reducing the tax hikes on retirees, reducing the tax hikes on the poor, and start funding the state services again right?
No. Now they are talking about further tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy. Why? Because he is running our state government like a business. When cutting costs and services worked, there is no incentive to do anything differently.
I'm trying to keep my political beliefs out of this, but I'm fairly sure you can see which way I lean. I look at government as a force for good... a force for it's citizenry. I don't look at government as an inherently bad thing.
I'll more than likely talk more about politics as it's something I'm very interested in. I also see it as something that is tearing our country apart at the seams. For now though I'll end by saying that our Government being run as a business is focusing on cutting waste, and it seems that rewarding employees for taking and keeping a job that has inherent disadvantages is in and of itself a waste that needs to be cut.
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