A Hidden Toll as States Shift to Contract Workers

A Hidden Toll as States Shift to Contract Workers

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: November 6, 2011


GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Like many states and local governments struggling to cut costs, Michigan hopes to replace some government employees with contract workers who will do the same job for less.

Ginny Townsend, 41, took a job in January as a nursing assistant in the state-run home for veterans here. Technically, she works for a private company that supplies some employees to the veterans home under a state contract. She makes $10 an hour, about half the wage of the public employees working at the facility.

“I love my job, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here,” Ms. Townsend, a former home health care aide, said on a recent afternoon as she cheerfully delivered fruit and a newspaper to an 85-year-old resident in a sun-drenched solarium.

With the national unemployment rate at roughly 9 percent, Ms. Townsend says she feels lucky just to have a job. But on her low wages, she is barely scraping by. She said she was raising four grandchildren under 11 with her unemployed sister and could not support them without the $300 in food stamps she collects every month.

..cont'd

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/business/as-states-shift-to-contract-workers-savings-are-not-clear-cut.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=business

Instead of paying a state worker directly, the same money goes to a "private contractor" who pays the employee starvation wages without any benefits and pockets the spread. Of course, he dutifully funnels a portion of his profit back as bribes "campaign contributions" to the lawmakers who got him on this taxpayer-funded gravy train.

We still incur the cost. We still pay the bill. We just have less oversight on how it's spent, once it's "privatized."

She told my husband and I that she had just been laid off from the State of Florida and she only had 3 years to retirement. Jeb was the 1st of many GOP Gov's that took the jobs right from the people because of tax cuts for his buddies. Then you started to see adds from job hackers like Spherion that uses part-time people in Government jobs with little benefits and less pay.

Here's a Petition that went around then:

http://www.petitiononline.com/JebLies/petition.html

Jeb Bush - Failure as Governor

Jeb Bush has failed at his job. The state had a huge surplus from Lawton Chiles when Bush took over. He squandered that with tax-cuts to the wealthy. He has misled the public about the severity of the state budget caused by his $6.6 Billion tax cuts that benefited corporations who own him body & soul. Florida can't afford another three years of Jeb Bush.

Jeb Bush - Cooking the Books to Get Re-Elected

During the last campaign, Jeb Bush knew full well that legitimate voters had been who had illegally purged by him and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris in 2000 were still off the voter rolls in 2002. Despite promises to restore the voting rights of "those people", the only solution offered by Governor Bush has been a complicated process of re-applying to regain the voting rights that should have never been removed. As it now stands some of them may be back on the rolls in time to vote on unreliable touch screen voting equipment in 2004 where once again their vote can be deleted more easily than ever before. This seems to be #1 in Jeb's devious (racist) plans. (Most of the people who have been purged are Black). Jeb tried to distance himself from all questions about the fraud & purge , saying he had no "direct responsibility" for state elections.


Jeb Bush - Devious Plans for Florida are abusing Florida's children, the elderly & the helpless.

IT TOOK 15 months for Florida's Department of Children and Families (DCF) to discover that 5-year-old Rilya Wilson was missing from her foster home. It took minutes for Gov. Jeb Bush to blame DCF workers. He has turned crucial state services--from education to adoption--over to be administered by private companies and like his brother did as governor of Texas, Jeb wants to shift the job of providing for the poor to faith-based organizations. He made huge cuts to needed spending programs for everything from education to Medicare, the health care program for the elderly and disabled.

A prime example is illustrated in this letter to the St. Pete Times on 04/15/2003 : "I am just one of the 26,000 who received the letter from the Department of Children and Families last week, informing us that Gov. Jeb Bush and our elected public servants have given me until May 1 to continue my chemo. Then I must prepare to die in half the time I would live with chemo."

(more at link)

.........

Oh yes this has been the "grand plan" of the GOP for many years now. Disgusting! It is all more for me mentally!

Such brains have no worth to society.