Bureaucracies are self-perpetuating, and the biggest one is the federal government:
Some federal workers more likely to die than lose jobs
The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.
The 1,800-employee Federal Communications Commission and the 1,200-employee Federal Trade Commission didn’t lay off or fire a single employee last year. The SBA had no layoffs, six firings and 17 deaths in its 4,000-employee workforce.
When job security is at a premium, the federal government remains the place to work for those who want to avoid losing a job. The job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43% last year and nearly 100% for those on the job more than a few years.
n Stealing You Blind I document some examples of how difficult it is to fire government workers. For example, there was the fellow in Arizona who remained a municipal employee despite being accused of six murders. His union, AFSCME, refused to drop his case until he was finally sent to death row.
Indeed, it is precisely because of labor union power in government that we have reached this state. So if you are worried about all those inappropriate gropers in the TSA and those who share your nudie scanner pictures with their colleagues, now that TSA officers are going to be “protected” by a union, you can be even more certain that they won’t be fired.
I once watched in line while an unproductive government employee complained to a productive employee that he was “making everybody’s job harder.”
Worse yet, government jobs are funded by productive jobs.
UPDATE,
Linked by The Other McCain. Thanks!
