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February 20, 2014 at 8:14 pm #610517
wakefloodParticipantWell, it’s about time someone broke this story about how the taxpayer is getting screwed by fat-cat gov’t employees.
Study released by CMD. Excerpt:
“The report shows that, contrary to misinformation, America’s highest paid “government” workers are not your local teachers, nurses, or sanitation workers. Rather, they are corporate executives who sign lucrative contracts to take over public services and then pay themselves and other executives eye-popping salaries.”
This report by CMD highlights just six of these “government” workers who, between them, raked in more than $100 million from taxpayers in personal compensation during the past few years alone.
Rest of the study linked in the article here:
Why doesn’t this surprise anyone? We’ve spent the last generation appointing foxes to guard henhouses, and installing Dept. Directors who want to sabotage gov’t and built revolving doors of public & private job-sourcing. Might as well add fraud to the list, eh?
America…we got this!
February 20, 2014 at 8:43 pm #804630
skeeterParticipantI’m kinda chuckling because I see things pretty differently.
I’m on the board of directors for my condo association. Our job is to use homeowner’s dues in an efficient manner. That typically involves hiring vendors that provide a needed service at a competitive price. One owner was complaining about high dues at a meeting. Basically he was tearing into us. One of his complaints was this. “I heard our landscapers are earning $40 an hour. That’s way too much. You’re wasting our money.” The upset homeowner then looked at me and asked “Is this true?”
Well, I didn’t know if it was true or not. I don’t know how much the workers earned. I only know what our contract price and service agreement was. So my response was as follows. “I don’t know how much the workers earn. I only know that we’ve agreed to pay the vendor $1,500 per month to provide an agreed level of services. We solicited bids and then chose the bid that represented the best value to the homeowners. So whether the workers are paid $4 an hour or $400 an hour is completely meaningless to me. My only concern as your director is selecting the vendor that provides the best value to the homeowners and then monitoring their service to make sure it is in compliance with the agreement we signed.”
So am I upset that George Zoley earned $22 million of taxpayer money? Absolutely not one bit. If his bid was so good that he beat out every other competitor, he must run an amazing organization. So my guess is he’s worth it. The only thing that would make me upset is if I learned that the bidding process to secure this work was not completely transparent and/or his company failed to perform at the agreed upon level of service.
February 20, 2014 at 8:59 pm #804631
wakefloodParticipantThis makes you two things, skeets: A)Very logical and B)short-sighted and Darwinian.
Just because somebody finds a way to screw his/her employees out of a responsible wage/fringe only means you win your tiny battle while we all lose the war.
The race to the bottom eventually effects us all. Downward wage pressure is a reality for virtually every American. And the only people making out are few who have the desire and capacity to use that pressure to enrich themselves to the exclusion of the people ACTUALLY doing the work.
There’s a reason that CEO’s in this country make hundreds of times their average worker and that far exceeds every other functioning 1st world economy. How’s that working for us?
It may always have been thus, but it hasn’t always been how we ran our world and to my eye, judging by the state of our economy isn’t even CLOSE to optimal. Actions have consequences…
February 20, 2014 at 9:01 pm #804632
miwsParticipantI thought this was going to be a thread about the Majority of Republicans in the Republican Majority of Congress! ;-)
Mike
February 20, 2014 at 9:03 pm #804633
wakefloodParticipantMike, we can always count on you to “go there”. ;-)
February 20, 2014 at 9:25 pm #804634
dobroParticipant“So whether the workers are paid $4 an hour or $400 an hour is completely meaningless to me.”
That’s pretty much the problem in a nutshell. You don’t care how other people are treated in a work environment as long as your needs are met. It’s not too many steps from there to NAFTA, right-to-work-for-peanuts laws, union busting, etc. And it’s ok until you end up on the other end of the deal someday. Of course, most who exhibit this attitude think it can never happen to them. Hubris, I think its called.
February 20, 2014 at 9:25 pm #804635
wakefloodParticipantskeets, let me see if I can make an analogy work here. Haven’t thought this all the way through so I may end up tossing it out but here’ goes…
Major League Baseball. The owners of teams decided – after much wrangling – to spread the wealth around. Meaning, they pooled all the $ from national TV rights and distributed amongst all the teams – even the small market ones who needed that money to pay players to field competitive teams. They begrudgingly saw it as important to the long-term health of the entire league. BUT, as is the case when given the opportunity, a number of those small market teams pocketed that $ and didn’t bother to pay for decent players and laughed all the way to the bank. This pissed off the big market/high payroll teams, of course.
So, what did MLB do? They instituted minimum player salaries that get adjusted up over time. Yes, MLB has a minimum wage – in the paltry $450K/yr. range currently and growing almost yearly.
This means that even the miserliest owner has to cough up a certain amount of $ to field a potentially competitive team worthy of consumer’s ticket expenditure. This amounts to a salary floor.
Our current salary floor (minimum wage) for average workers is so low that the big market “teams”(read Walmart) are laughing while the taxpayers spend billions to support those folks’ ability to survive via foodstamps, emergency healthcare, etc. etc.
Which is to say that I just hijacked my own thread about corruption into a minimum wage screed! ;-)
And don’t get me started on Walmart’s virtual version of baseball’s “antitrust exemption”!
February 20, 2014 at 10:01 pm #804636
skeeterParticipantGuys it is great to have a social conscience with your own money. And I don’t mean that flippantly. I really believe that.
But when it comes to spending *other* people’s money, such as a board member of a condo association is tasked to do, it is my opinion that it would not be appropriate to select a vendor on a basis other than price, reputation, and service quality. So long as a vendor is properly licensed and insured- price, reputation, and service quality are the only criteria we use in vendor selection. As a board member I would not even ask a vendor whether their employees earned a living wage or whether their employees had medical coverage or whether their employees had paid vacation etc etc.
February 20, 2014 at 10:11 pm #804637
skeeterParticipantWakeflood I like your post #7. Please feel welcome to start a new thread on minimum wage? I think we’d have a spirited discussion!
February 20, 2014 at 10:19 pm #804638
JanSParticipanta good read from this morning:
interesting comments after the article, too…
and, yes, it’s Daily Kos, so some will feel a bit slanted. So what? She said what she said, did what she did, as did others. Yeah, guess I’m cynical a bit today, too :)
February 20, 2014 at 10:45 pm #804639
dobroParticipant“So long as a vendor is properly licensed and insured- price, reputation, and service quality are the only criteria we use in vendor selection.”
Exactly why we need gov’t to mandate minimum (living) wages, regulate health and safety on the job,and prosecute vigorously violations of such. If, as a society, we committed to a floor beneath which we don’t allow people to drop, folks like skeeter could make their determinations with a clear conscience about worker conditions. Sadly, we’re not there yet.
February 20, 2014 at 10:45 pm #804640
wakefloodParticipantskeets, you can write as well as anyone, feel free to cast the first stone/OP re: minimum wage. Maybe you’ve got some data you’d like to share?…
…I think I have a few pieces. ;-)
February 20, 2014 at 11:12 pm #804641
wakefloodParticipantAnd just so we’re clear, skeets, I get why you make the decisions you do for the condo assoc. It’s really tough to buck a trend, especially when you’re dealing with people who are pushing for lowest cost. I empathize. I’m merely noting that that little decision gets made a billion times a day all over America because it IS easier than the alternative.
But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s right nor that it shouldn’t be looked at on the levels – economies of scale – that make your easy decision closer to the right one for the greater good.
I didn’t want you to think I was making this a discussion about your choice of maintenance crew, per se. But it does serve as a functional proxy for the bigger issue and highlights our different approaches to the problem – as you indicated in your first post.
Onward…
February 21, 2014 at 5:47 am #804642
JTBParticipantWake, the trend in outrageous CEO compensation has been attributed in large part to the roll of boards of directors in perpetuating the culture. Many board members are recommended or appointed by CEO’s and of course receive generous compensation for their roll. It is common for those individuals to serve on multiple boards. A look the GEO Group is instructive in noting the connections they each developed with city, state, and federal agencies on the way up in their careers and then consulting positions and numerous corporate boards. It’s a pretty ingrown system of corruption that is not based on performance as we know from too many glaring instances. I read an article recently that pointed out the primary function of the board of directors is not in fact to assure shareholders get a good return on their investments as is commonly accepted; instead it is to assure that the corporation fulfill its legal and fiduciary obligations. In Europe the corporate by-laws tend to have much more stringent standards concerning corporate “good citizenship.” But then CEO’s of many European corporations aren’t consumed by hitting quarterly performance goals or other short term measures, instead emphasizing stability and community involvement. It’s pretty difficult for small stakes shareholders to influence things like board membership, etc. here, so I don’t expect much change in the current culture.
February 22, 2014 at 4:33 pm #804643
waynsterParticipantDon’t let the 1% find out that they are over paying in taxes or being underpaid ……lmao
February 24, 2014 at 4:49 am #804644
JoBParticipantskeets..
doesn’t worker compensation affect service quality?
i certainly find that it does.
when i was evaluating bids for a condo association.. one of the first things i looked at was the company’s financials… which included employee compensation…
i found how the company treated the employees who would be doing our work a better predictor of service quality and dependability than customer referrals.
February 24, 2014 at 5:58 pm #804645
skeeterParticipantHi JoB. We don’t ask bidders for financial statements. We’re an all volunteer board that meets for about one hour per month. We simply don’t have the resources to look into details. But I’m sure you are correct that worker compensation effects quality.
February 24, 2014 at 11:51 pm #804646
JoBParticipantskeeter.. as a former accountant it didn’t take me long to look over the relevant info…
a company that doesn’t treat it’s employees well won’t treat you much better.
February 25, 2014 at 1:20 am #804647
skeeterParticipantA lot of bidders wouldn’t even have financial statements though. And if there were financials they wouldn’t be audited. And I suspect many vendors would not want to release financial statements since they are privately held companies. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I’m just saying I don’t think many private companies would give financial statements to customers. I know our company would not release financials to our customers.
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