"Who gets paid more, private sector workers, public sector workers - ?"Can you really compare a high tech engineer, producing a product, with a public sector worker administering the wage and hour laws of the state??
Lets compare some general working conditions:
* Are they fairly compensated?
Both sides - yes mostly. Averages can be skewed by those Wall Street pre-Bernie Madoff types. But an average engineer may make $80K. An average public sector worker may make $55K. But lets not stop there.
* Do they both feel the pain when times are lean?
Both sides - yes mostly. Widget factories have layoffs. Ask the engineers at Honeywell who was notorious for laying people off when no contracts were forthcoming, or hiring like mad when they got government contracts.
It is tough on older workers now, who may only have the skills related to a sloooowwwing industry. But I hear C programming is still alive and well. Still older tech workers do face age and wage discrimination.
Public sector workers have to endure years with no pay increase. Nice if your expenses don't go up, but most people have rent or house payments, food, fuel. And of course smart phone cell bills, and those expensive kiddos. Expenses go up. Layoff happen, and I've seen really good people go from temp government job to temp government job without getting a fair chance at a stable living.
* Is it fair across the board for both sectors - ?
Ha. If this were a fair universe, well, no one would go hungry. No one would be escaping with the clothes on their back from the only country they had ever known, to escape being shot in their hospital bed (as is happening in Libya, according to some Red Cross reports).
I've seen people in private firms be way underpaid (1/2 of others' salaries) - all you need to do, Nghia, is negotiate for a higher salary. Yes, that worked. Walter was more bold - give me a 25% salary or I walk, he demanded (and got it too).
Harder to negotiate a public sector salary. We get nice little perks like working at home on occasion (nice, but then once you get into that, as we have discovered, we work more hours..)
And there are both sweatshop firms where people are underpaid, not to mention the really egregious cases of trafficked labor and unsafe working conditions, if only OSHA knew. There are public agencies where people are yelled at daily, so I've heard. So lack of respect and abuse can exist on either side.
* How to pay people - ?
In the private sector, you can sell your widget for what the market will bear. Price against your competition, and you know its global competition. If you can't compete, you can lay people off and develop that lean mean workforce. Innovate and be creative. Create value with your marketing campaign. Industrial design. Or, just ship production to Indonesia or someplace cheap. And if the quality is there, ok. Because you can't compete on price alone. And someday if its widgets your making, the cost of fuel is a factor. Not so with xrays read in Bangladesh or call centers in the Phillipines.
What if we took this approach with public sector pay? What the market will bear. Hey - if you don't want to pay $17/month for trash service, then fine - take your own trash to dump. If you don't want repaired roads, then fine - get a new transmission every other year from the potholes.
Education always comes up - what should we pay teachers? How about what the market will bear? I used to be against charter schools, thinking they would gut public schools that we know and love. But, why not competition.
Why not pay for performance?!
Here is Oregon's savior, and I don't mean the new Gov. Based on a 30 minute interview back about 6 years ago as a lowly intern, I am placing my faith in Mr. Michael Jordan, the new Chief Operating Officer of the State of Oregon. (no relation to basketball players from Chicago).
I was writing my paper on pay for performance, and low and behold, this is what he had implemented on the "enterprise" side of Metro, the regional government. Hey - a government organization, paying people based on performance. An idea that could stick... Michael Jordan are you listening?
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