All Those Benefits

[Drahthaardogs]

I keep hearing about "all of those benefits", I have, and I think some people are living in the past a bit. The days of the great benefits are over, and have been for at least a decade.

So, as a Federal employee, here is what I get.

1. Vacation - 4 weeks paid a year, I have to earn them (six hours) per pay period. In eight more years, I will get six weeks of paid vacation.

2. Sick Days - I get one per month

3. Holidays - I get all federal holidays off

4. Insurance - I am on a PPO plan. I pay $250 per month, my employer matches it. I have a co-pay, and a 20% co-insurance, plus pre-determined set values for procedures. I have to go to in-network doctors. I have dental insurance, its not much, I pay 100% of all of the premiums. I have a vision plan, it is not much either, I pay 100% of all of the premiums. I have long term disability insurance, I also pay 100% of the premiums for that. I have life insurace for me and my wife, I pay 100% of my premiums. All told, my employer provides me the opportunity to be insured, but I pay most of the premiums myself.

5. Pension - Every month 1% of my salary is put aside in a fund. When I retire, this fund will be used to purchase an annuity for me. It will roughly be about 35% of my highest three year salary and will be broken up into twelve payments throughout the year. I get this annuity for life, but cannot take the money (money I earned by the way) and do with it as I please. Also, if I chose to have a survivor benefit on it for my wife, my annuity will be decrased about 15%, whether she uses it or not.

6. 401K, my employer matches the first 1% of my input 100%, and the next 3% I put in I get a 50% match. After that, it is all on me.

7. Overtime - I am not allowed to work overtime.

8. Social Security - I pay into SS like everyone else, and I am expected to use it as part of my retirement.


Now I am not bitching. I understand that most do not have what I listed above. However, I do not see any of these things as having a whole lot of "fluff", except maybe the federal holidays. I still work with people who were on the old Federal retirement system, and we are no where near what they had. There has been a steady decrease in benefits over the last fifteen years and it is continuing.

I would also like to note that white collar federal employees make about 20% less than their private sector counterparts. Some of the wage-grade more blue collar positions are paid more than their private sector counterparts, but I feel that those private jobs are grossly underpaid in the private sector because of the issues with physical labor in this country.

[Scruffy1]

1. Thanks-There is so much misinformation out there.

[Chris_Texas]

2. Those are GREAT benefits my friend.

[Drahthaardogs]

3. Never said they were not

thes are good benefits, but they are not extraordinary. In all honesty, my friend who works for AT&T has much better pay and better benefits. It is not like the old days when folks got triple time for working on their birthday, shit like that ended twenty years ago. This is basic middle class stuff. I have health insurance, extra life, dental, and vision that I pay for, and a retirement system about 96% funded by me. If I work 35 years I can retire for my last fifteen. I just do not see how this has become a "Cadillac Plan" full of fluff and extras.

[ljm2002]

4. Four weeks paid vacation a year is a great benefit...

...more in line with what Europeans enjoy than what we see in this country.

As someone who has worked in the private sector for over 30 years, let me tell you: standard is to start at 2 weeks vacation, and if you're lucky the company will give you one extra day per year worked, up to 4 weeks if you're really, really lucky. Not only that, if you change jobs and go to a new firm, that vacation gets reset back to the standard 2 weeks. So if you've been working for 20 years but get an offer you can't refuse, get ready to cut back on those vacation days.

I can't comment on the other benefits, but that 4 weeks vacation just jumped right out. Most American workers will see that and be mighty envious.

[Courtesy Flush]

6. Not the people I know

A friend of mine has a blue collar job. He's on vacation right now. I've lost count of how many times he's taken off in the last year.

He and I used to hang out more, but every time he wanted me to do something, I couldn't get away from work. He was always telling me I need a new job. Sure, I had lots of leave accumulated, but they don't actually let you take leave. It's very misleading. Real vacations are almost unheard of.

They say my accumulated leave will count toward my pension (to mollify us for not letting us use it), but the GOP may take that away before long.

[ljm2002]

7. Just because you have a friend...

...who gets lots of vacation time, doesn't mean that's true of most folks.

Please see this link:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922052.html

average number of paid vacation days per year

Italy 42 days
France 37 days
Germany 35 days
Brazil 34 days
United Kingdom 28 days
Canada 26 days
Korea 25 days
Japan 25 days
U.S. 13 days

Read more: Paid Vacation Around the World — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922052.html#ixzz1EcNgKA8n

In any case, I know that the vacation policies I cited for myself are true, and these policies applied to everyone I worked with as well. When I started my most recent job, I did negotiate for more vacation time based on my years in the industry -- but it did not come automatically, I would have started at 2 weeks like everyone else if I had not negotiated it.

[Courtesy Flush]

9. Negotiating is not an option here

If a new employee has a lot of experience outside of our system, they still start at bottom pay and bottom benefits. Nobody can negotiate for more.

We can both poor-mouth all day. The fact is, nobody has benefits out of the pure generosity of their employers. Taking benefits away from anyone will open the door to take from all.

I'm surprised to see how much support Gov. Walker has on DU

[ljm2002]

13. I'm sorry if you mistook my post for poor-mouthing...

...I wish everyone had 4 weeks' vacation to start out with! In fact, if I had my way, we'd all have 6 weeks paid vacation and we'd all work 30 hours a week. Because really, in this day and age, it does not take 40 hours a week from everyone to get done the works that needs doing.

My only reason for replying to the OP is that it talked about "my benefits aren't all that great", and then proceeded to spell out their list of benefits. As I said, while I can't really comment on the other benefits from a comparative point of view (mine are pretty darned good, actually), I do see that anyone who says "My benefits as a public worker aren't all that great" and then proceeds to list 4 weeks of paid vacation, is not very good at considering who their audience is. Most Americans can only imagine 4 weeks paid vacation. That was my only point.

[Drahthaardogs]

17. I never said "aren't all that great"

my point is, my benefits are what I would call decent, not exhorbitant, but the media would have you believe they were some gilded package. If you are going to quote me, be accurate, if you have better benefits than me, be happy.

[ljm2002]

18. I agree with you...

...your benefits are not exorbitant. However, for most Americans, 4 weeks paid vacation sounds pretty gilded.

Sorry, I don't want to belabor it or beat a dead horse. I'm glad you have decent benefits, and believe the real issue is that more people do not have decent benefits. I do not begrudge you the benefits that you have worked hard for.

[tavalon]

15. Wow, I must have a support Governor Walker filter on my DU

I haven't seen word one supporting that ass.

[Retrograde]

12. Vacation plus sick time

There was a trend in Silicon Valley a few years back (I've been out of the job market for awhile) to offer "Paid Time Off" in lieu of standard vacation and sick days. The way this was sold was to tell employees that this way they got extra vacation if they weren't sick. OTOH, if you did get sick you had the choice of eating into your vacation time or showing up to infect your fellow workers. Guess what people did.

Then there's the mandatory unpaid overtime:classify all positions as exempt so people can work 60 hours for the price of 40. What it actually means is that people do more personal stuff at work so they'll be perceived to be there and productive.

There's no legal obligation AFAIK to provide any paid time off to any workers not covered by contracts, so us peons should be happy with the generous two weeks we get :sarcasm:

The best benefits package I ever had was 4 weeks vacation after 8 years (and that was the max) and unlimited sick days (which turned out not to be abused much) and 50% employer contribution to 401(K) up to a certain percentage of pay. They went out of business a few years ago.

[Drahthaardogs]

14. I started at two as well

I have been in my position for ten years.

[ljm2002]

19. That makes more sense...

...and was not clear from your post. It sounded like you started at 4 and will work up to 6. Although of course, very very few people ever have a job where there is any potential of 6 weeks vacation!

As I said in another post, I do not begrudge you your benefits, just trying to point out you may want to consider how you present them. It's the same reason they were able to talk about taxing "Cadillac health plans", when those were at best "Chevy health plans" -- because most people don't even have that.

[Courtesy Flush]

5. The "vacation" numbers can be misleading.

It's nearly impossible to take a vacation. Sure, the leave accumulates, but it's not like we take a couple weeks off every year. Some private sector employees I know are required to take their vacations every year. My uncle works in a blue-collar job for an oil company, and actually takes about six weeks off every year. He has a high school education and makes about as much as my wife and me put together. And my wife has advanced degrees. My aunt used to work for a bank. She and her husband decided to spend a couple of months in Maine a few years ago, and she took a leave of absence. I could never do that. Despite the fact that I have 2.5 years of accumulated leave, the best I could manage would be a week off.

In the last year, almost all the leave I have taken has been to accompany my wife to her medical appointments, which they have to allow me under FMLA.

Oh, and we don't contribute to Social Security. We have to have a pension, or we'd still be dragging into the office at age 90.

I'm not complaining. It's good employment. But it's not the cushy, dead head gig that the RW is making it out to be.

[rainbow4321]

8. Having worked for a county owned facility once

I can definitely say numbers can be misleading

We "earned" 6 hours of PTO per paycheck but we HAD to use those PTO hours for any federal holidays that our place was closed. There was no "don't use my PTO, I'm saving it for a vacation or potential sick time".
So by the time the winter holidays were all said and done, most of us would have zero hours in our PTO bank (16 hours for Tgiving--Thursday and Friday, and then 16 hours for Xmas Day and New Year's Day). We would actually lose more for Xmas and New Years if the holiday fell on, say, a Thursday and management shut down the place for the Friday after the federal holiday so everyone could have the full weekend off. So there were some years where we werre made to use 16 hours of our PTO for EACH of those federal holidays.

And, heaven forbid, you try to take a few hours off for a doctor's appt or an emergency..first words out of their mouth "do you have any PTO, if not, you can't or is has to go thru 2 different levels of management to get approved". Didn't matter if you said "I don't care if I get paid or not".

I was on a bus that broadsided a car one morning, I had to get looked at by the EMT at the scene because my back started to hurt. After I got looked at, I got on another bus and made my way to work. Half way thru the day, the back pain got worse and I asked to go home because over the counter meds were not helping. Again, first words I heard as my boss went to her computer "do you have any PTO?".
I listed off the paperwork I could get to justify my injury..you want the police report, the ambulance report, the bus company report?? I was injured in a bus accident this morning but still tried to come to work instead of going home...I AM leaving now regardless of my PTO bank.
And this was in a health care profession setting, with people that you think would understand.


Having also worked in a federal setting afterwards, it was amazing to me to hear that I would get paid double pay for any federal holiday I worked or I would get paid 8 hours regular time for the day if I was not scheduled to work. No more handing over my earned PTO time for those days!

[speltwon]

10. I have very good benefits

Much better than yours, apparently

1) Medical: My agency pays 100% of my medical premium. I have 90% coverage (I pay 10% insurance pays 90%) until I have paid out $450 in a year, then it goes to 100% coverage. I also get coverage for 60 physical therapy appointments, 35 chiro appointments, and 60 massage/acupuncture treatments (60 total. I can mix/match). Drugs cost me $12 for a 3 month supply via mail or $7 for a month supply at a local pharmacy. It costs me nothing to add a family member. Each family member has same coverage.

2) Sick days: 15 per year
3) Vacation: 15 per year
4) Comp time (can take days off on demand. ) . Can take paid overtime or build comp time for every hour workedof overtime get 1 hr o/t pay OR 1 1/2 hrs comp time
5) Retirement: 2% * yrs worked * average salary of 5 highest consecutive years... Assume average salary of 100k and 25 yrs worked. That would be 50k per year at retirement, for example
6) 403(b). No matching. Can put 15k per year into it, pre-tax.
7) Overtime: Heck yea
8) Social Security: yes
9) Take home work vehicle: Yes
10) Disability insurance: Yes. My union pays for it with part of my dues

I have essentially NO complaints about my coverage or benefits. I also busted my ass to get this job and work hard

[snot]

11. The point we all agree on is, ALL workers shd have decent benefits; and in the US, they don't.

We KNOW it's possible, because we HAD decent benefits in the US before, even when workers were much less productive, and workers in other nations have better benefits than we do here, even though they're less productive.

We KNOW economic systems around the world are going bust, not because of benefits promised to workers, but because most of the wealth we're creating is being looted by the top 1%.

[TBF]

16. This is fine - but I think what we should be doing is posting the payment/benefit plans

of the CEO's. Comparing and fighting amongst ourselves only help divide us - and that only helps the rich.

[jp11]

20. We should ALL have those benefits AND more BUT it doesn't warrant attacking those WITH them.

It is silly to try and bring people who work for a living down to make ourselves feel better in a misery loves company prophecy.

It is different with the rich who have so much money they don't know what to do with it except let it make them more money in various investments which most people can't afford or take risks because it won't hurt them to lose a ten grand or a few hundred thousand here or there, etc. My ire for the rich isn't to make them poor or even bring them to the working class level it is simply to have them pay more because they can most afford to. We as a society gain nothing good from having an elite class controlling our country/world money supply to suit their small minority's specific ends. The rich can live perfectly lavish lifestyles with all the benefits of wealth without being catered to at every turn by government with freebies, breaks, and passes that the rest of us don't get along with any of the money they have.