Since the 1960’s the size of the federal workforce has dropped dramatically relative to the U.S. population. While the population has grown 65% since the 1960’s, the private sector workforce rose 125% and the federal workforce grew by just 9%.
I am a Federal government worker. I am paid to fulfill the “sacred” duty of caring for our veterans. I put the word “sacred” in quotation marks because I suspect that you and I have different definitions of how one carries out a “sacred” duty. As the VA scandal has unfolded, I have noticed a certain lack of attention being paid to some other statistics. What has happened in the VA is shameful. It embarrasses me since I am a VA employee. I am not going to excuse what happened, but I am certainly going to point out some other factors that need to be considered.
Look at the statistic above. Since the 1960’s, while the population has grown by 65% and the private workforce by 125%, the civilian Federal workforce has only grown by 9.7% (federal figures come from the Office of Personnel Management). During that time, you (the public through your representatives) have heaped thousands of additional laws, mandates, and regulations on our back. Since that time, you have heaped on our backs additional millions of people to be served. Since then, for those of us in the VA, you have dumped the often ignored heroes of three major conflicts and various minor conflicts on us and told us to care for them without giving us extra help. Not only have you not given us additional aid, you periodically claim that there are too many of us and that if only we were more efficient, the whole thing could be funded for nothing. We have been ripped for being faceless bureaucrats, but you haul us before Congress should there be even the whiff of not following one of your decrees and/or interpretations to the letter. There is no doubt that there is too much paperwork in the VA, but we have often had to develop that to protect us from you and the hearings you hold. You micromanage us and you reward compliance above efficiency and service, and then you wonder why we develop paperwork to prove our compliance even though we become less efficient and less service oriented as we do so.
Let me give you a small example. The current privacy regulations that were passed after some well publicized releases of information from the VA have locked us down in a privacy mode that actually causes extra work and impedes us from getting our real work done. Once a quarter, my boss must certify that she has checked all our computer access to ensure that we do not have access to menus that we should not have, even if there have been no changes in our workforce. Did you know that there are periodically fights between privacy officers (mandated by you, btw) and managers over the fact that in waiting rooms the names of the next patients are called out? So far, we keep winning that fight, but privacy officers are troubled that someone might hear someone else’s name and tell people that John Doe had been in the waiting room, and this would violate John Doe’s right to privacy. Have you ever tried calling a patient to the desk using only a number? In passing, how caring is that approach? But, we must fulfill your privacy mandates and document that we have done so.
On top of that, because you continually complain about our pay, it is rarely raised and often withheld. For four years, President Obama did not allow any raises in our income while inflation was still happening. Did you know that the recent response of at least some Congress members was to not only halt all executive bonuses, but also to try to halt all bonuses and to freeze our wages again? Finally some members of Congress have realized that there are insufficient healthcare workers in the VA. But, they have yet to realize that for several of the healthcare professions the rate of pay is lower than they could earn in private employment. Yet, if you have read the news, they have realized that supposedly some VA workers are overpaid and that you could save money by lowering our wages. Most of the supposed overpay is in the non-healthcare workers, such as cleaners, janitorial, etc., although some has to do with non-healthcare professionals. So now you are going to lower the pay of some of the lowest paid workers? I suspect then that in the future you will complain about how hard it is to hire devoted service-oriented workers in those classifications. But, after all, you have to make sure that we are fiscally responsible. It is funny how almost always that means lowering our remuneration and rarely means increasing it!
In many of the healthcare professions, it is important that at least some of the workforce go to annual conferences in order to learn some of the latest information on the treatment and management and testing for diseases. In many private institutions, that type of travel is considered part of the cost of doing business. If we do that, then we are somehow pampered creatures who are misusing your money. Should we dare to hold our own conference, we will be charged with being wasteful because we did not hold the conference at a “Motel 6.” As a priest, I have been to enough church conferences to know that Christians, whether evangelical or not, do like their creature comforts and insist on an excellent venue for a Christian conference. There appears to be some lack of concordance here between how you behave and how you expect a federal government worker to behave. In your conference, you will employ professional lighting people and even have funny, or informative, videos. In our conference you tell us that we have wasted your money on unnecessary things.
So, you have not really increased our numbers, but have increased our work. You have withheld our pay increases and lowered some of our wages. You have loaded us down with additional heroes to care for, but have not given us the facility upgrades, etc. that we have needed. You have seized on every scandal and supposed scandal to prove that this means that we are misusing money on a wide scale. You have helped create the very culture that you now excoriate. And, your only answer is to hold hearings, throw some money at the problem, and, try to withhold wages again. And, you wonder how this could happen, because, of course, you have had no part in this. It is “them” those faceless bureaucrats.
I am not amused.
Hello Father. Thank you for caring for our wounded veterans. I appreciate what you are saying here, because I work in the non-profit world providing services that uphold the law in the absence of any local/state/federal efforts to do so. What I would say to you in reply, though, and what I tell myself when experiencing a cut in pay, no increase for 5 years, no bonus (what’s a bonus?) and reduced benefits is this: don’t consider public service to be a lifelong career. Go forth into the for-profit world to seek remuneration for your skills. If you wish to stay and serve at the VA, keep in mind there are millions of tax payers who contribute to your salary who make much less money than you do. And while it’s true we have a representative form of government, the complexity of laws and society today makes it impossible for most citizens to understand what their representatives are doing.
God bless!
Indeed. I’ve been a federal worker for 28 years. I’m in IT and I’m quite good. I enjoy the challenges presented in a very large, geographically diverse organization and I also like feeling that the work I do serves a useful purpose beyond simply enriching some corporation’s bottom line. But I’ve had any number of contractors, friends, and even fellow employees wonder of the years why someone with my skills stays with the government given the way we’re treated. I tune a lot of it out as much as I can, but it’s an increasingly good question.
AMEN! As a fellow healthcare worker (although not a federal employee), I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment and wonder if you’ve considered forwarding your exceptionally well-written remarks on to various and sundry lawmakers? I would point out though that although government workers have been pinched the worst, it’s the entire healthcare system that is straining. I haven’t had a raise myself in 5 years and the hospital I work for has decided that they need to cut back because exams are down. Isn’t that what this is supposed to do…save money by cutting back on over-used or useless diagnostic services? An article in our home paper the other day talked to ED physicians complaining that they are not making as much money because the ED is not as busy! Really!? Isn’t that what we are supposed to be doing here? And can you define what you mean by losing money? The top heavy-both professional (ie doctors) and management- healthcare system needs a complete overhaul and I for one am hoping for the day where we go to single payer. I’m sick and tired of having way too many chiefs and they make well into 6 figures…but the worker bees don’t get raises or are expected to take cuts in benefits and do more with less. As an example, we are being told to look for ways to save money and we don’t have enough staff to fill all shifts at the same time they are building a million dollar fence and basketball area for the sports medicine doctors…where is the logic?
On a closely related topic, my son did just what Scott Morizot was contemplating: he left government employ. After the last shutdown, when he was furloughed for 4 weeks without pay…and no back pay (federal contractors did not get back pay) he made the decision to leave his company where he was working cybersecurity and jump to a private company for the 1. better pay and 2. job security. He is a veteran and highly skilled at his job but he can’t stay working where he is not valued and his family may lose their home because of some elected idiots attempting to make a point with other people’s lives. I guess the lawmakers feel everyone else should do their job because they are saints (we get a similar argument-it’s for the children!) but they don’t have to do anything to earn their big salaries.