A Model for Government

Good luck with that.

Were I`m from, if you have a unseeded flooded acres claim, they respond by threatening to strike...

It's not the new drive — it's recovering all the data...   ;-)

The public sector is unionized against US. Apparently, we are the problem, not them.

How dare you expect the public sector to work efficiently?! That might work in Shangri-La but not here, mister!

(joking)

Hey I hate unions as much as the next guy, but I work as a public service employee.

I work my butt off each and every day. I treat it as a honor to work in the public service, and respect the people whom I serve.

Not all the issues in Gov't are directly Union related.

Some are because of poor people. There is always some lazy bastard that seems to get away with screwing things up and keeping his job.

Sometimes the gov't just wants things checked 37 times before it is done with 200 pieces of paper tracking. I don't know why, it is just government.

Sometimes it is a client who screws up and has to blame the service provider.

I can get better, it will get better. Wait for it...

One thing I don't like about returning drives is the information on them. Apple replaced my drive and let me keep my old one.

Wouldn't it be nice if the public sector worked remotely this efficiently?!?

Might as well wish for universal peace while waiting.

Imagine if we could do that with politicians.

It's not the public servants per se...it's the otherwise unemployable, completely inexperienced at anything, common-sense-challenged buffoons they hire as managers based on the strength of a degree in a completely useless field and that given the standards in today's universities are mostly merely prooof that they can parrot back what the professor tells them, right or wrong, so they can appear to be 'part of the team' and that means automatic managerial material for a government that changes it's priorities and policies each and every election or cabinet shuffle and is still overstocked with leftover liebral appointees...don't blame the person taking your paperwork or sending it to you, they don't write it, they just mail it or hand it out and check that all the boxes are ticked off in the right spot when you finish it...it's the lunatics that 'develop trends' and 'correlate data' that create and perpetuate the mess...the clerk making $35,000 a year would be just as happy with one less form and a few less rules and policies that were promulgated to cover singular events..if a meteor were to strike a gov't office tomorrow, by Monday there would be 200 memoranda and at least 40 new rules to cover who was responsible for preventing the next one.

Had the same experience with Dell at work. We bought 24 work stations and a new server. One of the video cards died after a week. Called Dell support, gave them the contract number and told them what part I needed. This was about two in the afternoon.

Arrived at work the next morning and there is a FedEx package waiting for me. The new video card.

Add on a SWEEP EHF fee to the cost of the drive, and then try to get rid of the old one. Take into account the surplus SWEEP has already banked off of all electronics and the fact that SWEEP DOES NOT allow free market recyclers to run a full four R service in Saskatchewan, and worse, the Brad Wall Sask Party cannot create a full fair and equal participation in the SWEEP program, be damn glad the system worked for you at all. It sure has screwed us.

"Hey I hate unions as much as the next guy, but I work as a public service employee.

I work my butt off each and every day. I treat it as a honor to work in the public service, and respect the people whom I serve."

Really, and how many "sick days" have you accrued that you didn't take because you weren't sick but will still get paid for anyway.

And how much of your health benefits do you pay. And how much of your generous pension do you pay.

Didn't think so.

Horny Toad I had 293 sick days, got nada. I pay 250 a year for health benefits, spent about 9 dollars in the last five years. Wasn't worth a claim and I paid in total 7% for CPP and pension although that has gone up. Course when I'm 65 they subtract one pension from the other so you collect early to lose less but you can't work. Fed pensions aren't stackable.
I know what you mean though. There is a lot of agitatin' goin on.

UPS, and other private carriers, are only as good as the local manager. I tried to ship a firearm from Truro, NS to Alberta, last year. The local UPS guy quoted a price, so I arrived next day with the package. At that time, he informed me his manager had doubled the price, and would not insure the package. He said he was bending the rules by shipping a firearm. My son motioned to the manager's picture on the wall, and lo and behold, he was wearing a diaper, and his name was Mohammed. It was absolutely obvious he planned to steal that weapon. I drove 5 blocks to the post office, and had no problems, whatsoever.

The post office has a similar deal for returning many items, such as Bell receivers, and Telus receivers.

I'm not here to cheer for unions, but I do believe our postal service would be sorely missed, if we were to lose it.

Speedy:

250 a year for benefits? Most employees with families pay that much or more a month. CPP is 5% of salary for everyone thus your are getting a pension for 3% - a steal and the benefit you are going to get is practically unobtainable in the private sector at any cost.

(what you claim for healthcare etc. is irrelevant. It's that you had insurance for those costs that matters)

when someone says, "I work for the government", you know they are lying!!

Must give kudos where they are due:

The passport office is now quite efficient. Other departments could learn from them.

GYM, now, now, there are many that try to do a good job. It is the system that needs fixing big time. Bemused talks about much of the problem.

I have to agree with anne from some place other than Cornwall, although Cornwall is a nice place.

The public sector works very efficiently at extracting money from you with the consent of your neighbors. This is all it was ever designed to do.

- Politician: we need to support the company because if we don't jobs will be lost

- Corp Execs: we had to cut costs to maximize shareholder values

- Shareholders: WTF?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAKsMnAM8vk (Aaand, it's gone, via South Park)

There seems to be alot of misconception about government pensions and benefits....

government workers pay full CPP contributions, the same as anyone else, but they can't collect it since the cheque is subtracted from the pension cheque...in effect we subsidize non-public worker's CPP cheques...say 'thank you'

My pension contributions are about 6% of my salary PLUS full CPP contributions and maximum EI contributions, I pay that for 35 years before I get my pension, put 6% of your salary in an RRSP or tax-free savings account for 35 years, get a much bigger payout than I will and stop whining...or work for a company with a pension plan and get to keep your Canada Pension cheques along with their pension cheques...just because you don't want to pay for your retirement doesn't mean that I can't..stop complaining about what you didn't do and leave me to try to enjoy what I DID pay for...after I pay taxes on that too...oh, and by the way, military pensions are taxable too and military members pay taxes on their salaries..as well as for barracks rooms and for the meals they eat...too many people seem to think they don't.

As for the health care payments...I pay the same federal and provincial taxes as anyone else, probably more because the government knows exactly whatI got paid and I can't hide anything 'under the table'...that includes provincial health care fees...when I was in the military, I paid provinvial health care fees like OHIP and Alberta health care and was expected to use the Base facilities...again, I subsidized everyone else...the government health care plan is quite likely the worst one around, but it's run by a liebral cabinet minister's kid so what do you expect...I'd rather have Blue Cross and I pay extra premiums for it...

I also pay full EI premiums...without a hope of ever collecting it since I'll have a pension...the rest of you can work for awhile, collect the EI I paid into for you and then work a bit more, collect CPP and GIS then whine about me collecting a pension I PAID for...

Typical 21st century Canadians...see something someone else worked for and then complain that you didn't get handed it for nothing...you belong on the liebral or dipper website so you can whine with your peers...

What's orange and sleeps eight?

City of Public Works truck.

Why do the hallways of Civil Service buildings have a stripe down the middle?

So the people arriving late don't bump into the ones leaving early.

Wouldn't it be nice if the public sector worked remotely this efficiently?!?

new question: Wouldn't it be nice if we could format and delete the public service just as easily ?

@ Speedy & Bemused: You're both right, of course, about public sector benefits and pensions, but you're also rowing against the tide here.

The notion that government employees might actually earn their benefits is utterly at odds with the overriding narrative at SDA, which is that government is to blame, always, full stop. The key is to keep the storyline (and morality) simplistic -- no nuance is allowed, no exception considered, no variation from the singular monotonous drumbeat.

Davenport:

Sorry, but I'm so tired of losers whining about their own mistakes and blaming me for working and paying for something I might find useful instead of trying to find a way for everyone else to pay for it for me because I couldn't be bothered.

Go ahead, get rid of all the government employees, catch your own criminals, keep them in your own basements, buy your own destroyer or fighter jet to protect yourself, test your own food and go around telling everyone else about a listeria breakout, rescue yourself when your homemade uncertified boat sinks, watch out for yourself on the highways and make that unsafe truck pull over for repairs, research your own disease and oversee the production of the drugs to make sure they're safe, etc, etc, etc...let's get rid of every single municipal, provincial and federal employee and let everyone fend for themselves....at least it won't be nearly as crowded in a few months.

I'd be the last one to say we couldn't get rid of a few levels of management or a few entire departments or 'services' like cbc, but tarring every single employee with the same brush is kind of pointless and just the sign of an unsatisfiable whiner.

I don't think all public sector jobs should be eliminated, not at all, but they need to be recognized for what they are, an expense. Yes, you pay taxes, and yes, you contribute to your own pension plans, etc. What seems hard for you to admit is, your entire salary, before taxes, was taken from the tax contributions of private sector workers, land owners, businesses, etc. You can try to move portions of your income to different columns, but it doesn't change the ledger. It would be so much simpler if public sector workers, politicians, etc. were to be exempt from all these complicated tax systems, and simply paid a flat wage/salary. Their pensions could be based on this, and also paid on a flat rate basis. It would save many millions in expensive accounting. Anyone who invests money knows, the more you move money around, the more it bleeds away your investment.