On Dec 11, 8:40*pm, thunder wrote:
On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:33:51 -0800, Jack wrote:
Seems that parity has been more than acheived, huh?

Uh, actually no, the Federal workforce still needs to catch up. *If you
want to check parity, you have to compare similar jobs, and
qualifications, not just average the whole workforce. *

Uh. no.

www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0605-35.pdf

"Despite the escalation of federal compensation, some government
studies have found that federal workers are
underpaid, and that they suffer from a “pay gap” compared to private-
sector workers.2 By contrast, some academic studies have found that
federal workers are overpaid.3 Comparison studies that find a pay gap
sometimes compare federal workers to those in large businesses. But
many U.S. workers are employed by small businesses, which tend to have
lower compensation levels. More important, comparison studies
typically look just at wages and don’t consider the superior benefits
paid by the government. Federal workers receive health benefits,
retirement health benefits, a pension plan with inflation protection,
and a retirement savings plan with a very generous match. (By
contrast, 40 percent of private-sector workers do not have access to
an employer retirement plan at all.) Federal workers typically have
generous holiday and vacation schedules, flexible work hours, training
options, incentive awards, excessive disability benefits, flexible
spending accounts, union protections, and a usually more relaxed pace
of work than private worker. Perhaps the most important benefit of
federal work is the extreme job security. The rate of “involuntary
separations” (layoffs and firings) in the federal workforce is just
one-quarter the rate in the private sector.4 Just 1 in 5,000 federal
nondefense workers is fired for poor performance each year.5 All these
federal advantages in benefits suggest that, in comparable jobs,
federal wages should be lower than private-sector wages."