Governments need to pay many of their workers more while also expecting more from them. And they must stop using COVID as an excuse for poor service quality.
Feeling this very acutely here today while my student is home from school today. He also had last Wednesday off and the Wednesday before that off for “School Improvement Day”. He also has 11/8 off, the full week of Thanksgiving and two weeks around Christmas. We’re averaging about 4/5 days a week this year. It’s a combination of District maladministration combined with hyper aggressive teachers union. Parents (especially poor parents) are stuck here trying to figure out how to deal with this. The Catholic Schools are bursting at the seams right now with incoming students because of this.
I sincerely hope government pay equity with the private sector can get some attention. I recently left a job I loved in government for a similar private sector job. There was no way to justify keeping the public job. The max pay, years ahead of me, was 10% less than the base pay at my new job. And while I liked the idea of union representation, in practice -- shocking, I know -- they just protected bad workers and held down wages for talented workers. Their big "accomplishment" was negotiating a 2% pay increase for 2022 AND 2023. WHOOPEE.
I am very sad that there has not been an open acknowledgment by the Democratic Party and or educational union leadership that while the lockdowns were well intentioned they were also a terrible mistake. I am very afraid that we are not learning from this experience because it seems more likely that this kind of pandemic will happen soon enough that we should know better and if we close in person schooling for an extended period again we can’t say we didn’t understand the costs and benefits.
You see this everywhere. My dad is in long-term care at a VA hospital. Their "relaxed" protocols now are that family can only visit two at a time, on weekdays - no visits on weekends or holidays.
On those weekdays you are allowed to visit, you must still be tested before entering -- no matter how many times you've already had them test you that specific week. That means that you can only come in when someone is there to do there to do the swabbing, and they don't do it past 5 PM or during lunch.
So if you're a relative of someone in long-term care at the VA and you have a job, good luck finding a time you can get in and see them since you can't visit without a test, and you can't get tested at lunch, after 5, or on holidays or weekends.
Staff is tested far less often -- and so what actually happens is that staff comes in sick, patients catch it, and then we family members are stopped from visiting for two weeks (or until there are no more positive tests on their bi-weekly testing of the patients).
For patients like my father, with dementia, being kept from family is devastating. And so pointless.
And despite no one in the family ever having had Covid, dad's caught it twice while in their care.
We're just beyond frustrated with it, but you can't even find out who sets the policy -- they seem to have mastered the art of passing the buck. It's amazing that everyone knows the policy, but no one seems to know who sets it or how to speak to them or how appeal for a better policy.
Like so many things, it seems more likely to me that they find their jobs just a bit easier with no visitors allowed, and these ridiculous Covid policies are a great way to keep that going.
Meanwhile, it's going on in private medicine too. I've had a referral out to a GI surgeon since July, and they still haven't called me. When you phone them, no one ever picks up - you get a recorded message saying that they have a "vast backlog" of referals and they're working through them but they're not doing in-person appointments due to Covid and "please do not leave a message" as they won't return them. Just wtf?
The pay structure of government agencies is so frustrating. People talk about teachers or cops being overpaid or underpaid (usually holding the opposite opinion on one or the other depending on their politics), but nobody ever questions why we pay people nothing up front with a gigantic pension in the first place. It's a terrible way to attract qualified entry-level workers in their 20s into a field, and there's a reason no private entity pays this way.
While I generally agree with all of your points, the DMV offices in NYC remaining appointment-only is a dramatic improvement in the level of service. I was in and out in 20 minutes last month. A stark contrast to my last visit when I had an appointment waited hours anyway and when I asked what the problem was, was inexplicably told “The wait is long because we have a lot of appointments today because it’s a Jewish holiday.” Gotta love the DMV!
I don't expect everyone to understand or even like what my dogs mean to me, but if I was treated this way after someone bludgeoned my dog to death I would, no joke, start voting Republican. It's just an incredibly nasty, invasive sentiment and while I realize it's not shared by that many Dems I don't think I could pull the lever for them anymore.
This is the one that made my husband and me want to subscribe. Actually, we’ve been considering it for awhile, but we have quite a lot we’re reading and listening to now, so were going to wait until at least one of those subscriptions expired.
I used to work for state government when I was in my 20s (I’m 70 now), and it wasn’t great back then. There was a lot of waste, and plenty of employees who should have been let go, but that never happened, ever. Pay wasn’t great either, but compensation was way better than private, to the extent that it did seem like a good deal. There were so many benefits besides great insurance coverage, that I’ve forgotten a lot of them. Plus, being in my early 20s, I didn’t have to worry about taking care of anyone other than myself.
The real downside for me was the lack of opportunity to move up. It was never (at least at my level) about doing a good job, and getting a promotion. I was locked into something called “Typist II,” and if I wanted to apply for a “Typist III” position (yes, I had to apply), then I had to take a test (which had nothing to do with my abilities to do the actual job) where I competed with everyone else looking to get that position. Since those positions were scarcer, there was always a lot of competition, and I was never able to make the highest score on their test (which didn’t have much to do with the actual job).
I only lasted about 5 years total, and I can completely understand how the people who had been there a lot longer had lost their enthusiasm. We had a lot of people who were there physically, but I’m not so sure about mentally. Also, there were a number of people who obviously had mental health problems that went beyond boredom. Fortunately, in those days, we weren’t nearly as likely to have someone completely lose it and decide to go on a rampage.
Anyway, great article. We’ve been receiving your newsletter for awhile now, and we also enjoy your podcast. Now we can to read and hear the entire thing!!
I'm overseas right now where I am getting an earful from people on how awful consular services are - particularly visa issuance - at US embassies and consulates. It's ridiculous and embarrassing.
I agree with the overall gist of this post, but regarding compensation, I have to say that the prospect of a pension, plus getting to retire without penalty when I'm 58, was hugely attractive to me as a newbie lawyer in my 20s -- far more so than the big salary plus shit benefits package big law firms were offering me as an alternative. I took the government job and haven't looked back.
For uniformed government workers (firefighters and policemen), I think an underrated aspect that causes retention of underperformers is concern about sunk cost. Because departments train their own recruits from scratch (and thus bear their own training costs), they are loathe to fire someone and lose the $25K+ they have invested into making someone a policeman or firefighter, or as another way to look at it, they are loathe to spend $25K+ training a replacement.
It’s an odd practice that we would never set up elsewhere in government. (we don’t hire teachers or social workers anywhere near that early in their education!)
And there’s an easy fix, community colleges could train law enforcement and firefighters instead, and states could set up loan forgiveness for program graduates that serve for 5-10 years.
I rage-read this article. In a good(?) way. As a former Park Slope resident, parent of 2 public-school children, MTA rider, and human being forced to interact with USPS/DMV/passport office on a periodic basis, this article hits infuriatingly hard. I'm a left leaning centrist, but this is almost enough to make me vote libertarian. Or anarchist.
This article convinced me to renew my subscription. I need more righteous anger in my life.
As a well-paid do-nothing lawyer for a federal agency, I am growing extremely concerned about the editorial direction of Very Serious.
Feeling this very acutely here today while my student is home from school today. He also had last Wednesday off and the Wednesday before that off for “School Improvement Day”. He also has 11/8 off, the full week of Thanksgiving and two weeks around Christmas. We’re averaging about 4/5 days a week this year. It’s a combination of District maladministration combined with hyper aggressive teachers union. Parents (especially poor parents) are stuck here trying to figure out how to deal with this. The Catholic Schools are bursting at the seams right now with incoming students because of this.
I sincerely hope government pay equity with the private sector can get some attention. I recently left a job I loved in government for a similar private sector job. There was no way to justify keeping the public job. The max pay, years ahead of me, was 10% less than the base pay at my new job. And while I liked the idea of union representation, in practice -- shocking, I know -- they just protected bad workers and held down wages for talented workers. Their big "accomplishment" was negotiating a 2% pay increase for 2022 AND 2023. WHOOPEE.
I am very sad that there has not been an open acknowledgment by the Democratic Party and or educational union leadership that while the lockdowns were well intentioned they were also a terrible mistake. I am very afraid that we are not learning from this experience because it seems more likely that this kind of pandemic will happen soon enough that we should know better and if we close in person schooling for an extended period again we can’t say we didn’t understand the costs and benefits.
Ugh.
You see this everywhere. My dad is in long-term care at a VA hospital. Their "relaxed" protocols now are that family can only visit two at a time, on weekdays - no visits on weekends or holidays.
On those weekdays you are allowed to visit, you must still be tested before entering -- no matter how many times you've already had them test you that specific week. That means that you can only come in when someone is there to do there to do the swabbing, and they don't do it past 5 PM or during lunch.
So if you're a relative of someone in long-term care at the VA and you have a job, good luck finding a time you can get in and see them since you can't visit without a test, and you can't get tested at lunch, after 5, or on holidays or weekends.
Staff is tested far less often -- and so what actually happens is that staff comes in sick, patients catch it, and then we family members are stopped from visiting for two weeks (or until there are no more positive tests on their bi-weekly testing of the patients).
For patients like my father, with dementia, being kept from family is devastating. And so pointless.
And despite no one in the family ever having had Covid, dad's caught it twice while in their care.
We're just beyond frustrated with it, but you can't even find out who sets the policy -- they seem to have mastered the art of passing the buck. It's amazing that everyone knows the policy, but no one seems to know who sets it or how to speak to them or how appeal for a better policy.
Like so many things, it seems more likely to me that they find their jobs just a bit easier with no visitors allowed, and these ridiculous Covid policies are a great way to keep that going.
Meanwhile, it's going on in private medicine too. I've had a referral out to a GI surgeon since July, and they still haven't called me. When you phone them, no one ever picks up - you get a recorded message saying that they have a "vast backlog" of referals and they're working through them but they're not doing in-person appointments due to Covid and "please do not leave a message" as they won't return them. Just wtf?
The pay structure of government agencies is so frustrating. People talk about teachers or cops being overpaid or underpaid (usually holding the opposite opinion on one or the other depending on their politics), but nobody ever questions why we pay people nothing up front with a gigantic pension in the first place. It's a terrible way to attract qualified entry-level workers in their 20s into a field, and there's a reason no private entity pays this way.
While I generally agree with all of your points, the DMV offices in NYC remaining appointment-only is a dramatic improvement in the level of service. I was in and out in 20 minutes last month. A stark contrast to my last visit when I had an appointment waited hours anyway and when I asked what the problem was, was inexplicably told “The wait is long because we have a lot of appointments today because it’s a Jewish holiday.” Gotta love the DMV!
I don't expect everyone to understand or even like what my dogs mean to me, but if I was treated this way after someone bludgeoned my dog to death I would, no joke, start voting Republican. It's just an incredibly nasty, invasive sentiment and while I realize it's not shared by that many Dems I don't think I could pull the lever for them anymore.
Same thing is happening in San Francisco, where (in one of many egregious examples) 45 traffic cops issue an average of 10 traffic citations a day.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/sfpd-traffic-tickets-17355651.php
This is the one that made my husband and me want to subscribe. Actually, we’ve been considering it for awhile, but we have quite a lot we’re reading and listening to now, so were going to wait until at least one of those subscriptions expired.
I used to work for state government when I was in my 20s (I’m 70 now), and it wasn’t great back then. There was a lot of waste, and plenty of employees who should have been let go, but that never happened, ever. Pay wasn’t great either, but compensation was way better than private, to the extent that it did seem like a good deal. There were so many benefits besides great insurance coverage, that I’ve forgotten a lot of them. Plus, being in my early 20s, I didn’t have to worry about taking care of anyone other than myself.
The real downside for me was the lack of opportunity to move up. It was never (at least at my level) about doing a good job, and getting a promotion. I was locked into something called “Typist II,” and if I wanted to apply for a “Typist III” position (yes, I had to apply), then I had to take a test (which had nothing to do with my abilities to do the actual job) where I competed with everyone else looking to get that position. Since those positions were scarcer, there was always a lot of competition, and I was never able to make the highest score on their test (which didn’t have much to do with the actual job).
I only lasted about 5 years total, and I can completely understand how the people who had been there a lot longer had lost their enthusiasm. We had a lot of people who were there physically, but I’m not so sure about mentally. Also, there were a number of people who obviously had mental health problems that went beyond boredom. Fortunately, in those days, we weren’t nearly as likely to have someone completely lose it and decide to go on a rampage.
Anyway, great article. We’ve been receiving your newsletter for awhile now, and we also enjoy your podcast. Now we can to read and hear the entire thing!!
Had to check 3 times to make sure I was reading a moderate left column.
Thank you for piece.
So well written.
Just a right-leaning moderate who couldn't agree more.
I'm overseas right now where I am getting an earful from people on how awful consular services are - particularly visa issuance - at US embassies and consulates. It's ridiculous and embarrassing.
I agree with the overall gist of this post, but regarding compensation, I have to say that the prospect of a pension, plus getting to retire without penalty when I'm 58, was hugely attractive to me as a newbie lawyer in my 20s -- far more so than the big salary plus shit benefits package big law firms were offering me as an alternative. I took the government job and haven't looked back.
For uniformed government workers (firefighters and policemen), I think an underrated aspect that causes retention of underperformers is concern about sunk cost. Because departments train their own recruits from scratch (and thus bear their own training costs), they are loathe to fire someone and lose the $25K+ they have invested into making someone a policeman or firefighter, or as another way to look at it, they are loathe to spend $25K+ training a replacement.
It’s an odd practice that we would never set up elsewhere in government. (we don’t hire teachers or social workers anywhere near that early in their education!)
And there’s an easy fix, community colleges could train law enforcement and firefighters instead, and states could set up loan forgiveness for program graduates that serve for 5-10 years.
I rage-read this article. In a good(?) way. As a former Park Slope resident, parent of 2 public-school children, MTA rider, and human being forced to interact with USPS/DMV/passport office on a periodic basis, this article hits infuriatingly hard. I'm a left leaning centrist, but this is almost enough to make me vote libertarian. Or anarchist.
This article convinced me to renew my subscription. I need more righteous anger in my life.
As an aside, the left’s idiocy around the Prospect Park dog killer reminds me how we botched the Central Park Karen story https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/8/9/22617239/the-racist-karen-in-central-park-story-the-media-hasnt-told-amy-cooper-bari-weiss?_amp=true