[quote=EconProf]I’ve heard that the public sector workers almost never quit, suggesting that they know they have a good deal. But that’s only anecdotal. Any Piggs have any statistics?[/quote]
EconProf, I don’t know about recent years (since unemployment has been higher in SD). But in the past, there WAS a big danger of losing an employee who has already spent 6 mos to 1 yr (depending on position), on probation and “training.” These were employees who were not yet vested, which took five years (with no LWOP or State Disability Leaves in that five years which were not paid back).
There is an abyss of hoops to jumps thru (and putting up with a load of BS that goes along with that jumping) between an employee’s hiring and vesting, much moreso when on probation. And every time an employee changes classifications (even if a “lateral” move), they are put back on “probation.” It is not uncommon for a public employee to serve 2-3 probationary periods back to back. This in no way implies they will be treated “fairly” while serving a probation.
Employees who were hired with marketable degrees/skills tend to defect before vesting. The danger of staying and vesting (even losing 3-4 years of an employees prime working years) is that they will use a computer on whichever agency they work for’s “network” day in, day out which is entirely proprietary to that agency. The procedures they have to follow day in, day out are also proprietary to that agency. Hence, the need to serve a *new* probationary period at each agency they go to. Many of the job classifications are proprietary to one agency only. After 3-4 years on the job, even if an employee WANTS to get out and work in a “private” job, their resume is now full of duties which have no value to private employers. Especially if their gov position was their first “real” job, a gov employee would very likely have to take a big downgrade in pay if they quit and took a position in the private sector.
After five years, vacation and sick leave accurals typically increase, making it harder to find a gig with even close to similar benefits elsewhere.
One thing private sector employees have over public sector employees is more freedom on the job, namely:
-freedom to visit websites they want to on the “company” computer (within reason);
-ability to telecommute (don’t have taxpayers coming in for services or have to see the agency’s “clients” day after day. And agency’s computers/proprietary information isn’t allowed to be taken home);
-and, don’t have to follow a strict dress code (ex. courts and taxpayers expect professional attire at all times).
Even AFTER vesting, there isn’t a great deal of incentive to work year after year in the public sector unless the public employee just LOVES their duties, their clients, their bosses/coworkers, etc. If they have skills which could get them hired in the private sector immediately (and the job market is such that they can), they often DO quit. The amount each year their pension grows is minuscule in proportion to the hoop-jumping, politics and other BS they have to put up with on a daily/weekly basis year after year.
The above applies to “rank and file workers” who obtained their positions by scoring on an examination and are protected by civil service rules. These employees are the vast majority of government workers.
The above does NOT apply to executive-level workers or officials who are brought in on interviews and reference checks alone (often from another city, county or state and perhaps even from the private sector), and who hammered out their contacts out with the public hiring agencies. These workers have no civil service protection and can (and often do) sue for breach of contract if they are let go before their contract expires. Hence the massive payouts in the OP, which were either in these employees’ contracts to begin with, or paid a lump sum to an employee to get rid of them early (settlement of breach of contract).
I CAN tell you that governments NEVER pay out humungous sums for former employees unless said employee has them over a barrel in some way! Here are three examples where they WOULD pay out but there are several more:
The employee had an ironclad, enforceable contact with the agency to get paid a certain sum over a certain period of time and the agency decides to terminate it early (for any reason);
their own employees made HUGE, GLARING and embarrassing mistakes with said employee;
or, an employee can properly substantiate in a government tribunal or court of law substantial fraud, waste or abuse perpetrated by any officer or employee of said agency, informed their supervisor and/or agency head and the agency PTB looked askance at the complaint(s) and actually retaliated against said informer (whistleblowing statute or qui-tam action filed).
In fact, the opposite is true. Every single government has a passel of attorneys on staff who do NOTHING every day but fight off monetary claims coming from ouside AND inside the agencies of the jurisdiction they represent. The small governments contract out this function to private law firms, but nevertheless, they operate in much the same way as attorneys representing insurance companies, except public entities are “self-insured” (excluding worker’s comp coverage).
If these agencies are “stuck” and/or don’t want a bright flashlight shown to the public on a particular issue (don’t want the press to get wind of it), and/OR they can’t possibly win in court, they’ll quietly pay an employee to “go away” but not without an indefinite “gag order” as part of the deal.
The payouts come out of the following year’s budgets of said offending agencies, as do their “attorney fees.” This often results in “billets” being removed from their budgets (cuts in staff resulting in layoffs or unfilled vacancies dropping from their staffing list).
There is always much more to these large payouts (upon an employee’s termination/retirement of a government job) than meets the eye.
