Government Should Consider Temp Workers

[MountainLaurel]

Ah, taking human resources lessons from Microsoft and Wal-Mart apparently -- work them to the very limit without having to pay benefits.

Are you ready for the "blended workforce"? Or for the "core-ring" staffing model?

Two University of Illinois-Chicago professors think it's time for the government to reconsider its workforce policies and seriously look at hiring temporary workers as a way to help offset the exodus of baby boomers and to help control payroll costs.

In their report, James R. Thompson and Sharon H. Mastracci point out that federal personnel practices and policies are "in a period of profound change" but that Congress and federal agencies have paid little attention to "nonstandard work arrangements," such as part time, on call and other temporary staffing methods.

snip

In their report, "The Blended Workforce: Maximizing Agility Through Nonstandard Work Arrangements," sponsored by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, the professors review staffing approaches tried by a dozen agencies. (The report is available at http://www.businessofgovernment.org .)

Noting that 90 percent of federal employees are in full-time, permanent positions, the authors contend the government should pay more attention to creating a blended workforce, which can include part-time, on-call, seasonal, intermittent workers and independent contractors. It also includes temporary employees and contract company workers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/07/AR2005060701800.html

[liberal N proud]

1. Everybody else is doing it.

One more straw to break the middle class.

[MountainLaurel]

3. Particularly bad

Considering the cost of living in the DC area -- the feds are one of the last major bastions of decent employment where you can still make a living, have your health insurance paid, etc.

[losdiablosgato]

4. I work in a government office as a technical contractor myself

I have a unique skill set on some systems. But about half of the office is contractors for another company, they are paid about $10 an hour. And guess what kids if you pay $10 an hour you will get $10 an hour worth of work. They cause the majority of th issues we have and have a very high turn over. In fact one of the last ones hired told me this job beats her last one, night shift at a burger king. You get what you pay for.

[MountainLaurel]

6. Hats off to you!

I worked as an editorial contractor for several years, and was amazed at how the agency treated contractors -- they were SO FUCKING PETTY and allocated resources not on the basis of whether you needed them for your work. The agency I worked for was moving into a new building, and designed the cubicle walls according to one's rank -- contractors naturally got the lowest walls possible. When one of our staffed got hired by the agency, it completely fucked their architectural drawings because she went from a contractor (lowest of the low) to one of the higher ranking posts in the agency.

Computer resources were allocated the same way, no matter whether your job required that you use a memory-intensive program like Quark. One of the contractors literally crashed his computer every five minutes. But there was nothing to be done, as a contractor, that was the best computer he was allowed to get.

But that explains why our technical assistance was so bad, if it had been provided by people who the week before had been flipping burgers. They did nothing for the agency itself -- all that was handled by a couple editors who thought they knew technology. Of course, one of those "knowledgeable people" only loaded half of Quark on her computer because she didn't have the memory, and couldn't see why that would cause problems when we got the graphics files ready for printing at our end -- half the time fonts were missing, text would be on a different page. We discovered this after six months of wondering why every edition of the newsletter we received was so fucked up.

[wakeme2008]

2. temp workers for Iraq... 18 month contract.... low pay...no medical...

sign up today..... :(

[leftyclimber]

5. No, no, no, NO!!!!

Dammit!

First of all, I was dumb enough to move back to the States two years ago because I had a deep-seated feeling my country needed me, what with all the BS going on here and whatnot. So I did that. I left in '96, came back in 2003. I'm in permanent culture shock -- this is not America.

Now I'm running up the bills trying to get a grad degree because I thought, "Gee, I hate the corporate world; I'll do something I like ... and maybe I can work for the government in hopes of having a little job security."

So they're talking about realigning the whole structure of the dang thing last night, and now they're talking about TEMPS??????

Damn. I was working retail for a while after I left Corporate Hell. Maybe I should have stayed there.

Then again, maybe I should just go start a hippie commune somewhere and raise goats.

Sigh.