Moonbox

I was wondering what people thought of how Obama's refusal to support Syrian rebels progressed predictably to the hijacking of the revolt by ISIL. Good foreign policy, right?

Why is the public service generally older? Could it be, perhaps, because retention is a lot higher and people STAY with the public service because of pay/benefits? I'd like to get your thoughts on that! No offense Argus, but that's a pure nonsense answer and only a public sector worker/apologist would even offer it. The same cramped and/or sedentary working conditions are demonstrated all over the private sector as well. Thankfully for all of those mistreated cubicle monkeys, however, is that they don't have to actually have to come into contact with the 'normals' like most of the private sector does, avoiding the perilous handshake! Yes, bureaucracy sure is dangerous work. All of the fax-machine and elevator button-touching (apparently) leads to almost as much illness and absenteeism as we see from nurses! Are we to believe that an office bureaucrat is in contact with as much potential infection as the average nurse? Apparently! To answer that appropriately we would have to know the actual (rather than fake) average rate of illness, which is itself difficult to quantify. The implication you make, however, is that the private sector worker is a martyr and comes to work hacking golf-ball sized wads of phlegm. This is most assuredly not the case. While I might go to work with a little sniffle or feeling a bit groggy for a couple of days, this generally doesn't explode into a pandemic. If you're visibly ill, most managers will send you home because they don't want you to get everyone else sick. As for how productive someone with the sniffles or a light headache might be, I would generally say a lot more productive than someone who's not there at all! I'm not assuming anything. I know that public servants take sick leave when they're not sick, just like I know private sector workers do too. The difference between the two is that it's far more systemic and/or easier to get away with in the public sector. There are also far fewer consequences. If I decide to go Pittsburgh and get wasted at an Sunday NFL game (and subsequently call in sick) I potentially lose business. All my teacher friend needs to do is send an email before 7:00am and someone comes in (no questions asked) to cover his classroom for the day. Sure, no complaint with unpaid sick leave. As for disability plans, federal public servants contribute minimal amounts to these programs relative to similar private sector plans. What's worse is that a lot of the private sector workers don't get any LTD plans at all. Oh boo-hoo. Look up the average job satisfaction of someone working for a major Canadian bank. Actually, here, take a look at a few of the reviews here and tell me how much better it is at CIBC: http://www.ratemyemployer.ca/Employers/CI/CIBC They also get paid a LOT less. Everyone hates their boss. Cry me a river. Job satisfaction is terrible in the private sector too, particularly in larger corporations. The unfortunate part is that it's WAY easier to lose your job than it is where you work.

but you can (as far as I've been able to determine) bank your sick days and take an extended vacation prior to leaving/retirement, which is little different than 'cashing' them out.

I offered it as a possibility. I also offered the possibility that people are taking extra days unpaid. Yes, this is true. If you take long term disability out of the equation you're looking at federal public sector employees still taking 11.5 sick days a year. Regardless, the best estimates show public sector employees take at least 50% more sick leave than private sector ones, particularly when they're unionized. Interestingly, sick days for unionized private sector employees are almost identical to public sector union employees. This leads us to the conclusion that unionized employees take more sick leave simply because, well, they can. http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/public-servants-take-average-of-11-5-paid-sick-days-a-year-watchdog-finds-1.1673262 In addition to the points already discussed, this article brings back the issue of banked sick days as well as long-term disability expenses. The article states: Public servants currently get 15 sick days per year, which they can carry over from one year to the next. If they use up their banked sick days, they can then take unpaid sick leave for up to 13 weeks, at which point they could qualify for long-term disability insurance. So can someone clarify this for me? Also, when we discuss the cost of benefits paid for 'illnesses', I don't think we can completely ignore long-term disability. The long term disability plans of federal public servants (from what I've seen) pays 70% of wages - far better than the vast majority of private sector ones, if they have any at all. It's fascinating (again) that nearly 50% of LTD claims in the federal public service are stress/depression/anxiety or vague "other mental health issues". These afflictions (for some crazy reason) are interestingly 20% less common in the private sector. I wonder why...

First, it didn't say they were banking sick days, which I understand is not allowed there, correct? As for 18 sick days instead of 15, there could be a host of reasons. It could be that people are just taking 3 extra days unpaid. It's more likely that they're taking the 3 extra days and it's not worth it for it for managers to make an issue of it. Now that I've answered your question (thinly disguised as an attempt to discredit the article), would you care to take a stab at why federal employees are taking 3x as much sick leave as private sector employees and what makes this reasonable?

Again, I'll ask, why is the sick-related absenteeism THREE TIMES HIGHER in the federal public service? Please give me a reasonable explanation, because if you can't, then I can't see how that's not abuse.

I don't know what I'm talking about? Why is it that the public sector (who previously earned less overall in 1991) have now reversed their position and are earning more than their private sector counterparts with similar skills/education? like the BC teachers, right? It must have been really nice for Toronto residents to watch their garbage pile on the curb while the highly educated garbage collectors went on strike. Utter nonsense! It's only new because the lobbyists used to be able to contribute large amounts directly to a party's campaign. Now they can't, so they're finding other ways to affect the vote. You can absolutely make comparisons. A customer service person at the Ministry of Transportation, for example, makes boat loads more than a customer service rep for a major bank. Both have strict regulatory requirements and significant training requirements. The bank CSR however, doesn't have a union backing him/her. Call centres have massive turnover because the jobs are a lot more stressful and pay a lot less. All of the CSR positions. How many of them are there do you think? Salary, no. Overall compensation? Yes, or at least approaching that. I've worked in finance for over 10 years and I know what people make. So 35 years ago? Useless info. The public sector compensation advantage is a phenomenon of the last 20-25 years. Let's move on. I think you should have been paid a wage comparable to what a similar private sector position would have paid (similar skill levels/complexity).

From the article: At the federal level, where 19,000 civil servants phone in sick every day, the sick-leave liability has ballooned to $5 billion. The average federal civil servant now claims 18.2 sick days per year, roughly trebling the private sector average of 6.7 days, giving federal government workers the highest rates of absenteeism in the country. Are you saying my Maclean's article sucks because it's demonstrating things that make your argument look stupid? So you think it's perfectly reasonable for federal public servants to take an average of 18.2 sick days, compared to the private sector's average of 6.7? Is that what you're saying? What are you even asking? Using (on average) 18+ sick days a year is abusive because you're essentially taking an extra 2 weeks of vacation every year on the taxpayer's dollar, when in fact it's designed to give people respite when they're actually sick. The practice of banking these sick days (to cash out or use at later date) simply legitimizes/systemizes it.

My complaint is about the overall abuse of sick day benefits. If they're not banking sick days, then they're abusing it by taking ~3x as many sick days as private sector employees. Is that clear enough for you??

I was talking about both. Banking sick days is a ludicrous concept. Interestingly, however, when public sector employees don't have that benefit, they somehow tend to get sick much more often. Strange right? Nope. Getting sick is a reality in life and you usually don't want your employee coming in either highly contagious or highly useless. What is NOT a reality, however, is that federal public sector employees get sick three times more than private sector employees which is how much more often they take time off 'sick'. http://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-sick-day-scam/ Bob how about you read that article and then try to explain how/why that's reasonable. Please.

I would surmise that this is a benefit that exists almost nowhere in the private sector, short of perhaps a closed-shop union environment. It's a benefit that should be abolished anywhere it exists, as it effectively amounts to extra vacation time the way it's used. Interestingly, when Ontario Teacher's lost the right to bank and cash out their accumulated sick days, there was a tremendous uptake in sick-days taken off on Mondays and Fridays. Hmmm...

The difference between the vacuum salesperson and the teacher is the $7800 (or less) paid for a 1 year teaching degree. Most teachers are BA's. Not only are most BA's entirely unimpressive academic achievements (with some of the lowest admittance requirements of their schools), but teacher's college itself is a joke. The worst part is that with nearly 10,000 teachers graduating in Ontario every year, most of them can't even find jobs despite rising class sizes. We can thank the Teacher's Union for that, who from one angle rail against the larger classes sizes and then from an another use their collective bargaining rights to bloat their compensation and ensure there are no jobs available for the glut of new and aspiring teachers. The hilarious part about the whole fiasco is that despite the fact that it's now widely known that finding a job after teacher's college is often a dubious prospect, people STILL flock to Teacher's College on the CHANCE they could end up a teacher. The compensation is THAT much better than they'd find elsewhere.

Yes, I agree. Well why don't we define that. I'll be going to bed shortly, but maybe for tomorrow we can compare the starting and 10 year wage of an average university grad to the starting and 10 year pay of a teacher (who's only done 1 extra year of school).If we can find another ~5 year program with similar requirements for academic achievement (ie. Teacher's college < Masters of Engineering) then we can look at that too?

Check the link right above your post.

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/2619721-nothing-middle-class-about-teachers-salaries-prof-says/

One person's testimonial. Good for you. Let's talk big picture though.

They're trying to eliminate the banking of sick days, which is a ludicrous concept in the private sector. They're also trying to curb the rampant abuse of sick day usage in the public sector. BTW, what's the 'sick days' average in the private sector and public sector right now?

The average private sector worker can't hope to achieve similar pay/benefits because they would drive their company out of business. Good thing the government can't go out of business! If the average person COULD get a job in the public sector then they would. Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to do so for a host of reasons.

There hasn't been any strikes because the government has generally been compliant. The government (and subsequently taxpayers) negotiate from a position of weakness because a disruption of services often has an EXTREMELY negative impact on the average person's life. There's also an enormous public sector union lobby who, as we saw in the recent Ontario election, can throw millions of dollars for or against political candidates. Read my post again. Equally skilled workers, on average, have significantly better compensation in the public sector than the private sector. A high school educated front-desk clerk makes a fortune more than a high-school educated fry cook. It has tons of non-skilled positions. It also has tons of low-skilled positions where an ubiquitous 3-4 year university degree (doesn't matter in what) is enough to land them a $60,000+ compensation packages right out of university if you have a family member in the public sector already. Go look up the average pay of a recent university grad. I dare you. Some lower level staff actually means virtually all lower and even mid level staff. While it's true that a very small percentage of the top earners in the private sector may make more than their public sector counterparts, they generally got there by being highly successful at their jobs in a competitive industry, rather simply being there a long time in a non-competitive industry where you have to do something REALLY stupid to lose your job. Like I said, similar education and similar skill sets are paid better in the public sector. The starting salary of a teacher, for example, was significantly better than the starting salary of a university grad (~5-10,000/year better) and most of them only had to complete a farcically easy 1 year program. That's a return on investment of a few years on the cost of their education and the compensation package skyrockets over a short period of time. After 10 years, that pathetic 1 year teacher's certificate qualifies them for a $90,000 salary. I challenge you to find any industry anywhere in the private sector that pays $90,000 a year to the average long-term worker with 5 years of education. Please. Try. While you're at it, look up the average earnings of a lawyer (with 7 years education) in the private sector.

Check out Cleveland or Detroit for a laugh. You could trade your 8 year old car in for a down payment. Regardless, none of what's been said so far really speaks to the real reason why the prices continue to rise. This is a textbook market bubble, with price increases not being supported by the fundamentals behind them (mainly prosperity and rising wages). The prices in Vancouver and Toronto haven't been driven by better paying and more jobs in those areas. They've been driven by fantastically cheap borrowing and by a coinciding influx of money from real-estate speculators (both small-scale and large). When interest rates drop, mortgage costs decrease, making it easier for people to buy more expensive homes and they invariably do just that. The real-estate investors know this and start snatching places up, hoping to either profit on quick flips or on rentals, driving prices up even further. At this point average Joe starts to clue in to what's going on and starts making similar plays. Up the prices go. Of course this can't go on forever. Eventually the costs become prohibitive at even today's cheap borrowing rates. At this point condo developers end up having vacant units and Mom & Pa find their house flipping project selling at at break-even or a loss. Even worse, eventually the interest rates are likely to go up. At this point those heavily financed investment properties start becoming prohibitively expensive to carry and people can't afford to purchase them anymore anyways. We all know what happens next and it's long, long overdue in Canada.

In a non-competitive environment, holding taxpayers hostage. Who cares? The benefits are worth real money and the overall compensation package for public servants is higher than the private sector (for similarly skilled people) WITH job security most private sector workers can only dream of. Good for the government. If the public sector isn't okay with this, they can go on strike. If they go on strike, they'll find once again that private sector workers aren't terribly sympathetic about paying higher taxes so public sector workers can live better than them. #golden pension

Nobody is going to deter Iran from chasing the nuclear dream unless they decide to invade it. It's called a rogue nation for a reason. Sanctions will, however, seriously compromise their efforts and, as we've seen, sparked protests against the regime. Does the average Iranian care about the bomb or about their livelihoods more? Sanctions are credited with ending Libya's WMD program and bringing the Lockerbie bomber to justice. They're a big reason South African apartheid 'ended'. Your comments on the effectiveness of economic sanctions seem to assume they're supposed to have the same goals and reach as direct military intervention. That's never been true. Sanctions are obviously an intermediate step when military intervention is either impossible or undesirable.

The sanctions may not be immediately effective for conflict-specific solutions, but they can very much affect the antagonists and cause a host of problems for them. Ask Iran how they're economy is doing right now. The goal of sanctions isn't usually to intimidate/force whoever they're aimed against. Instead, they're more aimed at making undesirable behavior more difficult/expensive to conduct (hopefully) to the point where's it's not worth continuing. Either way they're certainly effective, just not perhaps in a newsworthy and exciting sort of way. International "Law" is more spectacle than anything. The inconsistent, hypocritical and selective application of these Laws makes the legitimacy of the UN highly suspect at best. That precedent has already been set. Ever hear of Georgia, South Ossetia or Abkhazia? What about Iraq? Fact is that the application of International Law only applies if it's convenient.

Keeping the Bosphorus open is something altogether different than controlling the Black Sea in its entirety. Turkey's air force is dwarfed by Russia's and I imagine most/all of their airbases are within Russian missile range. It would take full and prolonged US and NATO mobilization to assert control over the Black Sea.

We have no business in the Black Sea. There are no current or foreseeable threats to Bulgaria or Turkey (our only allies in the region) and any gestures we make there are both empty and provocative, serving little to no purpose. The only way Russia is going to back down is due to European sanctions, not due to NATO impotently flexing its muscle in the Black Sea, an area in which they'd have no hope of challenging Russia.