Q.A Washington Post poll reported Monday that 52 percent of Americans believe federal workers are overpaid and that more than a third believe the employees are less qualified than those in the private sector. The poll also noted that three out of four respondents who interacted with a federal employee said it was a positive experience.
What do you make of the results?
Erica E. Johnson
Court Branch IV
Office of Disability Adjudication and Review
I work for the Social Security Administration in Falls Church. We deal with people from all over the United States who apply for disability benefits that have been turned down by the local hearing office. We are never fully staffed but we make do with the manpower and resources that we have. . . . I love what I do because I love helping people. Every Claim File is someone waiting for an answer about his or her benefits. We here at Social Security Administration take pride in what we do. It is never about the money. It is truly about our love for our country and the people that we choose to serve.
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Paul Denig
Retired
U.S. Department of State
In part, the poll validates the importance and results of all of the international exchange programs that the Department of State carries out each year: The more people have direct contact with each other, the more they respect, empathize and understand each other. Conversely, the less contact that there is, the more one group tends to fantasize about the other group, usually in negative ways.
With our experience on this at State, the results of the poll were not very surprising. What was disappointing was that [The Post] placed most of the polling results on those who had actually had contact with a federal employee at the end of the article, even though the views of this group were the most substantive and credible. The poll would have gained in credibility -and value- if respondents had also been asked their views on the quality of service they get from the private sector and whether, in their view, everyone in the private sector actually produces work in line with their salaries.
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[Name withheld]
My husband has been a federal employee for 30 years. He has a master's in Management Information Systems and is a communications manager for an agency.
He is at work approximately 10 1/2 hours a day.
Although I have a professional degree, I am a stay-at-home mom with three children. (We have one child with special needs, which made it difficult for me to work.)
During the economic boom times, we have had to struggle to keep up with our peers financially. While our peers were collecting bonuses, going to box seat athletic events paid for by their employers, and hopping from one job to another for big pay raises, my husband was getting a salary that was very moderate in this part of the country.
Our children's classmates were getting every new electronic toy, going on expensive vacations and the such. We were the last family to get a computer, the last family to get high-speed Internet access, the last family to get cellphones and we still do not have cable TV, all in an attempt to keep our expenses low.
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In boom times, federal employees do not share in the profits made by the private sector. My husband chose to serve the public with a government career. . . . Federal employees should not be penalized in bad economic times.
Please do not identify me in connection with this response as my husband respects his privacy and would not like our financial struggles exposed to the world.
Charles Gershenson
Retired Research Director
Children's Bureau, DHHS
The recent poll of the public's view of federal workers (Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2010) is a classical example of the surveys of public opinion conducted 60-70 years ago that my professor called "compounding of ignorance."
When the public "encounters" federal workers about 3 out of 4 report they are satisfied. How then to account for the public's image "that federal employees are overpaid and work less hard than private sector workers." There are three problems with this finding: (1) What is the image of a federal worker? Is it a postman, or a bio-scientist at NIH, a physicist at NASA, an engineer at a Nuclear Lab, a lawyer, physician, nurse or other professional, or is it the employees of more than 100,00o contractors that work for the federal government? (2) In the current economic crisis with high unemployment is the public reacting to tenure rather than pay? Federal employees did not experience a 9.6 unemployment rate; and (3) How does one compare the productivity of federal workers compared with that of the private sector?
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The complexity of answering this question baffles, economists, psychologists, political scientists, and mathematicians. So how does the person on the street answer this question?
The fault lies not with the public but with the survey professionals and the media. By the design of the questionnaire and the analytical framework used to interpret the responses the survey staff can readily collect collateral information to distinguish response fantasy, ignorance, or bias from available data. The media also have a responsibility to go beyond the survey press release... to document the reality as compared to the perception. Failing to do that, the media perpetuates a perception based on . . . ignorance; it compounds the compounding of ignorance.
Albert R Guay
Winchester, Va.
Most people who believe that government employees are overpaid have no idea how their salaries are set. I do.
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I was a civilian Personnel Officer in Veteran's Administration, departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force and as an Air Force officer. I also had my own business in a long career. . . .
Unlike private business where salaries are often determined by who you know, not what you do, government salaries are set after careful analysis of duties and responsibilities by trained, experienced analysts. Pay levels are set by what you do, not who you know or who your boss is.
How does the pay of the president of the Bank of America compare to the chief of the Forest Service or the director of the Office of Naval Research? The banker probably makes about $7 million, maybe more, plus million-dollar bonuses and Golden Parachute. Not one government employee, even the secretaries of Defense or State, make anywhere near a million. And no ridiculous bonus or golden parachute.
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The pay differential at the top goes all the way down the ladder. If you evaluate the responsibilities of business personnel in the same systematic way as government jobs are evaluated, you will find that government workers are usually paid less than private business workers in comparable jobs. I know. I've been there and done that.
For more commentary about the image of the federal workforce, go to washingtonpost.com. The Federal Coach: Finding a silver lining for federal workers, iews.washingtonpost. com/leadership/fedcoach; at the Federal Eye, read about Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, washingtonpost. com/federaleye.
