Federal Pay: Myth and Realities

One paragraph in this insane screed stands out in particular:

"Of course, particular federal jobs may be underpaid and others overpaid. The average annual compensation of federal air traffic controllers is $170,000, which certainly seems excessive. One way to determine proper pay levels objectively would be to privatize services and let the market decide what they're worth."

Fine, Chris Edwards, asshole from the Cato Institute, tell you what, the next time you travel on a commercial airline let's plug a $5.15/hour controller in every Tower, TRACON, and ARTCC from your departure to your destination. Still think controllers are underpaid?

Why the Washington Post prints this drivel is beyond me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/11/AR2006081101566.html

It is just a boondoggle for companies like Halliburton, etc. The only way the government can attract good employees is to offer benefits that private companies do not have (such as good retirement and good insurance- both of which many corporations have all but eliminated). They do NOT pay many of their employees comparable wages to the private sector. The myth of the overpaid federal employee is just a myth.

....knows that a corporation is getting paid by the head. The employee gets a small fraction of that overhead charge and the corporation does everything in its power to limit the amount the laborer gets.

Certain small towers were changed over. And I don't understand where they are getting that salary from. I looked up GS schedules on Google. Small towers are GS 10s and big facilities are GS 14s. Base rate is $42,000 for GS10 to $91,000 for GS14. Tops rates are $54,000 and $119,000 respectively. Maybe with overtime, Sunday and holiday pay etc, some make it to $170,000. Lots of overtime though.

...contract towers are becoming all the rage and Lockheed-Martin won the contract to privatize the Automated Flight Service Stations. Currently, there are no contract radar facilities (thank God) but that will change if Russ Chew gets to be the new Administrator of the FAA and if user fees are implemented.

I've been a controller at one of the top 5 busiest facilities on the planet for the last 15 years. We're "ATC-12s", which is the highest level of the new pay scale. Last year, I made $135,000...that's including premimum pay and overtime.

You all can judge the accuracy of the FAA's contention that the average salary is $170,000. If somebody in the top half of senority at one of the highest-paid facilities in the country makes $135,000, what must the AVERAGE salary be for air traffic controllers?

Certainly not $170,000.

The column asserts, "The average annual compensation of federal air traffic controllers is $170,000..."

Last year Capital One Financial Chairman and CEO Richard Fairbank earned $280,000,000 in total compensation. Who do you think works harder and is more valuable to our society, an air traffic controller at $170,000 or a CEO at $280,000,000. The former has responsibility for the safety of thousands of airline passengers and hour, the latter spends time thinking of new ways to screw Americans out of their hard earned money (yes, last year CapitalOne managed to turn my single late credit card payment into a $200+ penalty).

BTW, check out who sponsors the Cato Institute at http://www.cato.org/sponsors/sponsors.html.

The "total compensation" claim of $170,000 would mean that my "non-salary compensation" amounted to $35,000 per year (it doesn't).

Again, I'm in the top tier of the pay scale. If the claim is that the average ATC compensation is $170,000, and most ATCs are making less than $80k per year, are we supposed to believe that their non-salary compensation is in excess of $90k per year?

air traffic controller would make $5.15 an hour when a burger flipper first class in most parts of the country start at $7.00 an hour or more.

Common sense tells me that if air traffic controllers were privatized they still would make $100,000 plus a year simply because it is a highly technical position that requires special skills not easily acquired or learned.

Anybody can work a job that requires no skills like wrapping a burger correctly, but how many people can track and land a plane with hundreds of peoples lives on the line?

Those people ask and get the monetary compensation that comes with their skills

The truth of the matter is that the public sector workplace and the private sector workplace are much more alike than some would have us believe. Both have overpaid idiots lording it over underpayed staff, with a few exceptions for critical technical needs.

Both have a binge and purge budget cycle that results in waste. Both encourage incompetence in really weird and perverse ways. Both have horrible levels of political and nepotistic patronage. Both are constantly looking for ways to shaft the worker on their pension, or to reduce the pension obligations for the next generation of workers.

And privatization brings out the absolute worst in the corporate side of the equation, because the for-profit's attitude is that government tax money was "stolen" to begin with and milking the government for everything it is worth giving as little as necessary in return is the way to go.

There really is very little difference between the two sectors, and attempts to cast the public sector in a particularly bad light are just politically and profitably motivated psychological projection on the part the free-market private enterprise advocates.

Moreover it is a false dichotomy. There are plenty of examples of private nonprofits and for-profit quasi-public organizations arrayed in a spectrum that completely blurs the line between the "public" and "private" sector. And don't talk to me about "competition as a positive force" because the government is fully capable of setting up a competitive environment with multiple agencies competing for "customers" without going private.

They just don't because, like the corrupt CEOs and BoDs in the private sector, the folks in charge are in it solely for their own gain and pretty much sociopaths to boot.

National Air Traffic Controllers Association

www.natca.com

airport security, port and border security, and fighting wars come to mind. Do you really want these functions to be auctioned off to the lowest bidder?

Cato cannot even be called a think tank. I respect some of the real think tanks, but they are so far from credible it's pathetic.

I took two things from the article.

First CATO is ticked off that the failed personnel reform at Homeland Security is now DOA. That means that the cornerstone of the Bush civil service reform, destroying the civil service protection system and the general schedule, is in total cardiac arrest and won't be revived.

Second, that the Republicans who have privatized so many jobs in the federal government are now using specious statistics to hide their success. Thousands of jobs in the lower pay grades were sent to the private sector, so the government does not have that many jobs in poverty wage range. Those now belong to contractors.

my conclusion, I hope CATO follows up this fine scholarship with a comparison of the pay and quality of the work of those positions that used to be held by government employees, and are now occupied by employees of contractors.

Privatizing jobs in the federal governmment has been a disaster for the most part, but it's easy to see why the conservatives love it: the workers get lower pay and fewer benefits, the owners of the companies get rich, and it doesn't save the taxpayers a cent! A perfect conservative program.

I make nowhere near half as the air traffic controller, frankly, those folks are worth every penny.

Amazing to hear some folks repeat right wing talking points when I talk to them, they love to shoot off their mouth about federal workers being lazy and overpaid. When I ask them point blank if the soldiers in Iraq are overpaid, or if firefighters or policemen are lazy, they tend to stop the BS.

Several times, I played "Guess My Salary" with nasty callers. Gee, if I only MADE $100,000 per year... :eyes: