Is the Three-Day Holiday a Right?
With government statistics finding that federal workers are ridiculously more well-compensated than their average counterparts in the private sector, there’s another reason to join the parade of those bashing our nation’s pencil-pushers.
As we prepare to celebrate the new year, those who work for us in the federal government are likely to enjoy being in the midst of a stretch where they enjoy six paid holidays in the span of a little over three calendar months. Beginning with the observance of Veterans Day on November 11th and closing with Washington’s Birthday on February 21st, federal employees enjoy a number of three-day weekends thanks to a statute and executive order penned decades ago.
Regardless of which day of the week holidays traditionally fall on, most public sector employees have a day off carved out for them from the typical workweek. Even with the 2010-11 calendar placing Christmas and New Year’s Day on weekends it just wouldn’t do to have our public servants miss paid time off work, so those holidays are celebrated on the preceding Friday. This provision for weekend occurrences also affects the newer tradition of celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday, since the January 15th anniversary of his birth falls on a Saturday.
Still, with the exception of that observance and a later change to Veterans Day from a short-term home as the fourth Monday in October, we have followed the federal calendar of Monday holidays for forty years. Prior to 1971, Washington’s Birthday and Memorial Day were celebrated on their traditional dates of February 22nd and May 30th, respectively. But while Memorial Day 2011 will be Monday, May 30, the birthday of our first president will fall on a Tuesday, and having a midweek holiday messes up retailers and ski resorts, who love the cash register’s jingle on midwinter three-day weekends.
And if the holiday falls on a weekend, celebrate on the weekend. The rest of us work New Years Eve, and take the 1st off. This year I’ll get Saturday off. Yoo hoo. Are government workers entitled to more than I am? I think not.
Let’s just roll back government employment by sending half of them out on a permanent vacation.
Good answer. It would be much more effective to reduce the number of federal employees than to just move their holidays.
I’m a gov contractor and the holiday situation does create some inconvenience. We don’t get as many holidays as the CS people do. This means that some days the government buildings are closed & the CS people off, but we’re still expected to work. Unless we have take-home work, we have to use vacation time on those days. Like I said, inconvenient. The company I work for helps a bit by providing us with “floating holidays.” These are leave days we can use ONLY in the situations described above. I don’t believe the floaters cover ALL the government-only holidays, though.
I don’t really care about the money – I’d just like everyone to be on the same schedule. Either we get the same holidays as the CS or they give up some of theirs.
Not to mention how worthless they are while supposedly ‘working’! After 40 years of employment, 20 as a business owner, I have never met the ‘Government slug’, I would ever, have offered a job to.
While there are many worthless government employees, there are some who are dedicated and hard working. this lumping every government worker into the “useless as a slug” pot is childish and does nothing to resolve the issue of their inflated pay and perks. I work in the grocery retail business and am lucky to get Thanksgiving day, Christmas day and Easter Sunday off. and the market pressure is dictating that we open those days since people apparently can’t plan ahead to have enough food to get through one stinking day. I’m not sure I’m in agreement with making the government work under the same conditions, but clearly market forces do not play into government pay the way they do in business.
Don’t complain about the holidays. Concern yourself instead with the amount of annual leave and sick leave they receive.
Well Walt, why stop at that? Lot’s of people work on Saturday and Sundays so why should the Feds get those days off as well. Why not make federal workers work seven days a week for their inflated pay? That’s the way the military officially works. You have take leave to have weekend off. (That’s why the Navy calls it liberty when when they give you time off without leave.) Better yet, why not end all holidays for everybody especially Christmas which favors one religion over all others. The Orthodox manage Christmas quite nicely without official sanction for January 7th.
The author’s premise is stupid. No matter how many days off one gets it matters little if it’s on a Monday or any other day of the week. Many of our major holidays were shifted to Monday not just for federal workers but to give all people who have the day off a long weekend.
Yeah Federal workers are overpaid but they have become a scapegoat for a frustrated citizenry. Cut federal pay rates may be satisfying to some but other than lowering the cost big government it does nothing to reduce it’s power. If you want to restrict government fire government workers by eliminating/combining functions. Keep the pay the same.
What a great idea ! Lets lay off (fire) about 20% of the non-military federal employees. We could start with departments like Education and Agriculture. They are nothing but lobbies for those industries anyway. Yes, Education is an industry.
Rodger on the 20%. Then let’s make the rest of them bumpable by returning veterans.
I think the federal pay freeze is a fine thing. However, not all federal employees are overpaid relative to the private sector. There are many types of workers and lumping them all together shows ignorance. I live in a ‘professional’ town – a lot of defense contractors, a lot of engineers. Those engineers that are civil service make about half of a comparable private sector engineer. They don’t have expense accounts when they travel, they pay their own way at all Christmas party type functions. Holidays and sick leave are great – but no better than many of the defense contractors. Many of the private sector have better health insurance – not all, but many. Many of the bonuses of the private sector are less in the federal area – things like employer issued cell phone or computers. Additionally, civil service employees are essential in some jobs, especially relating to defense. Corporations are often greedy and don’t mind screwing the government and military. I say, get rid of the departments of education and perhaps agriculture, get rid of TSA, cut out a lot of other government jobs – get rid of half of the department of defense. There is plenty of fat in the government. Keep in mind however, that not every federal job is created equal – some of them are doing essential security work and are paid less than their private sector counterparts.
Not so sure about the ridiculously overpaid part. I know many instances of DoD contract personnel who give up higher salaries to get into government service. The stability is more important to them (rather than worrying about contracts being renewed every few years).
I support the 2 year pay freeze as good for the country, even though I am personally bummed about not getting a pay raise between now and Dec 31 of 2012.
As for the holidays, I agree with putting them back on their actual day. Seems we have lost our focus.
I’m a government contractor whose job requires me to coordinate and cooperate with government employees. Let me tell you how the year goes.
In January, people are coming back from the “winter holidays” so they’re backlogged, making it difficult to get things done for at least a week or two. Throw in MLK Day to the mix.
February isn’t too bad, just one holiday that no one really cares about.
March is tough. Different school districts here in town (there are at least 5) have spring break at different times. The parents want to be off with their kids, so it’s hard to get anything done in March.
April and May aren’t too bad.
June, July and August are really tough because people are taking vacations at different times.
September is the last month of the fiscal year so everyone is jumping through hoops to spend money or lose it, complete paperwork that no one reads, etc.
October is the first month of the fiscal year so everyone is jumping through hoops and completing paperwork that no one reads.
November starts out well but then comes Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season. You can just about forget about the rest of the year.
Lather, rinse and repeat each year. Welcome to my world. While all of this is going on, I still have my deadlines to meet.
The cushy “public sector” jobs are far beyond just the holidays and vacays, folks:
It’s the outlandish, trillions in unfunded pensions, st00pid
I say, let them have all the 3-day weekends they want. They can take all 52 Fridays off if they want. Heck, they can even take all 52 Mondays off, too.
Just don’t pay the gubment drones for days they don’t actually work, unless they use their vacation pay.
We save money, and the bureaucrats have less time to make stoopid regulations that they don’t have to follow but the rest of us do!
Win-win!
For most civil servants, the less time they spend ‘working’, the less damage they can do.
Exactly. In fact, for employees of the EPA, FCC, SEC, FDA, and other regulatory agencies, I’d advocate 365 paid vacation days per year as a better alternative to the current scheme with just a few 3-day holidays. (Of course, the best alternative is 365 days of unpaid sabbatical per year.)
“…May 30 the birthday of our first President …”
Um, just to be clear: Washington’s birthday is February 22, a Tuesday in 2011.
“But while Memorial Day 2011 will be Monday, May 30, the birthday of our first president will fall on a Tuesday”
You almost got me mad at the editor until I realized the comma I placed there was still in place. Please reread and follow along with the rest of the class.
As a full time U.S. government employee for the past six years, I agree with establishing some practical limits to the federal benefits program. The situation is actually worse in some ways than the author relates: for example, I was recently assigned to Canada for a three year stint, and I not only received paid time off for all the U.S. holidays, I also was paid for the Canadian holidays. In 2010, this amounted to 17 paid holidays! RIdiculous! Before I entered government service, I was employed in the private sector for about 25 years and I never had more than 11 paid holidays.
Now, I personally feel that the taxpayers should get their money’s worth, so I completed a fair amount of work on those days off, either in the office or at home (personnel evaluations, reports, data analysis, etc). My colleagues were not nearly as conscientious, but my personal situation (single, no children) made it much easier for me to work during off-hours.
The holiday package for federal employees is overdone, no question. It is also likely true that the pay rates are probably not as good as the private sector, and I personally took a 30% pay cut in order to work in government. However, in a time of shared sacrifice I agree that there is no entitlement to the three day weekend when the holidays fall on Saturday or Sunday.
As a retired ‘skilled’ federal employee, I know there are a lot of lies being propagated about federal workers and their pay and benefits.
There ARE some positions in the federal workforce that are ‘political appointments’. Unfortunately, I never had one. I was in the ‘competitive service’ and had every single job application given a ‘grade’ for placement on the list for a certain position. Even with a grade of 97 (out of 100), and being a ‘vet’ would not guarantee you any job.
Anyone entering federal service today, has a choice of how much of their pay they will designate for their retirement fund. I never had a choice, and always paid into the fund at the maximum. Even in the military, I paid Social Security. (And if memory serves me right, they still take social security out of military pay; Why?).
My personal employment life spanned 48 years. Combined with federal employment and private sector employment, I paid into either Social Security or a federal employee retirement program.
Am I qualified to comment on the Holidays Federal employees get? I just might be, and I say they are too many.
The basic problem is the ‘unions’ that have infiltrated the federal workforce. Federal employee unions are nothing but a scheme to recycle funds back toward the Democrat/Socialist Party.
Federal employees can vote any way they want, in the voting booth. But, what good does that do when your union dues (which you have no choice in denying) goes to the opposing party?
Paid Holidays are a small part of the budget problem, but, they are only a symptom of the actual disease.
I get all those days off, and Good Friday. I’m not a Federal Worker, I’m in the Bond Business. It’s awesome!
I’m a federal employee. I think that holidays should fall on specific days. I also think that “paid holidays” should be reduced to one day – the 4th of July. I really don’t see the justification for any other paid holiday, except maybe Washington’s birthday.
So Fed Ret, you made the personal choice, allowed by law and custom in 2010, to enslave others for your own benefit. For that’s what your defined-benefit pension is. Enslavement of others.
Sort of like many folks benefiting from slavery felt in Right and Proper in the owning slaves from the 1653 ruling of Johnson vs. Parker, Northampton County, Virginia — upheld in courts and legislatures many times after, most notoriously in 1853′s Dred Scott, dealt with in the 1787 Constitution — continuing through Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 in the midst of the war against slavery and the 1865 enactment of of the 13th Amendment. For 212 years many folks, like yourself in a way, felt it was Right and Proper to live on the forced labors and forcibly conscripted wealth of others.
At some point — I reckon sometime in the Wilson era, or maybe in the FDR era, maybe even starting with Grover Cleveland and his grand scheme of apolitical lifetime civil servants as an alternative to the non-lifetime political sinecures which have been the wealth of corrupt political machines — these lifetime civil service and military Federal Government jobs became nothing less than a means of making free men slaves to such as you.
We need to STOP it. Start earning your own way, and not living off of our labors.
Man! You need to do some reading and research. If you put money anywhere over many years, don’t you expect some compensation (interest)?
You are becoming what the Obama Regime really needs for it’s sustenance.
Marxists talk about infantile leftism. The article represents its mirror image as infantile rightism.
The pay and benefits package for federal workers is irrelevant to the problem of oppressive government. The Constitution lays out the specific responsibilities of Federal Government: Provide for the defense of the nation; conduct relations with foreign nations; financing government operations and regulating the currency (yes, the Federal Reserve is constitutional); regulating foreign and interstate commerce; manage public, not private, lands; and generally provide for all other public goods. The central government isn’t about pensions or healthcare, student loans or mortgages. Focusing on whether the feds get a three day weekend is just a diversion by childish minds who are motivated by envy. Let’s leave that for the infantile left.
I wish to take issue with the statement that Federal employees “are ridiculously more compensated” than presumably the rest of the country. (I am a Federal employee.) I am agnostic about whether Federal employees have too many (or too few) holidays. I am also agnostic about whether there are too many (or too few) Federal employees.
Most of the comparisons of “compensation” of Federal employees are based on comparisons of average wages (or average compensation, which includes benefits). Such comparisons are invalid. They do not take into account the age composition, education, experience and location of the employees. The Federal employee work force, in general, is more educated and more experienced, and lives in higher cost areas than the rest of the country.
The following is a simplified example of what I mean: Suppose the Federal workforce is composed only of Ph.D. economists with thirty years of experience who earn 150 thousand dollars. (Note: For this example, I could have used any other high paying jobs such as lawyer, airline controllers, engineers and others like economists.) Assume that the going rate for the same kind of economists in the private sector is also 150 thousand dollars, but that in the private sector they make up only 2 percent of the private workforce. Assume further that the rest of the private workforce has an average wage of 50 thousand dollars. The average wage of the total private work force with the economists would be 52 thousand dollars, or about 1/3 of the average wage of the government work force. Is the government overpaying its workforce? Well it’s paying its economists just what they would earn outside of the government. Hence, one would have to conclude the government is not overpaying its workforce. It only appears so because the government has only highly experienced and highly educated economists in its workforce. (Note – most of the low-skilled jobs performed in the government are contracted out; if those were included, the government average wage would be lower than is reported.)
This of course is just an example. To really answer the question, comparisons would have to be made between what the government pays and what the private sector pays for the comparable job, holding various characteristics of the workforce constant. It may turn out that the government does indeed overpay its workforce, or it may turn out that it does not. One though cannot make that determination using average wages as the measuring rod.
I don’t know which branch of the federal government you work in, but, you are severely mis-informed.
The actual reason ‘government’ employees are ‘considered’ overpaid is that the upper levels are extremely over-compensated. Your own ‘mathematical’ logic makes this point.
Do your research. “Know your enemy” if, in fact, they truly are your enemy.
To Jack in Silver Springs:
“Such comparisons are invalid.”
Because a supremely well-educated docent like you can lay out many detailed reasons why they are, of course!
So too, by the enlightened year of 1857 could one of the finest legal minds the American Educational and Legal Establishment had until then had produced, a Judge famed for his scholarly detailed and sure legal reasoning, a Judge honored and rightfully famous among his peers, “The Judge” of his times, and a more literate times they were, as the letters redacted by one of our own time’s great men, Ken Burns, Documentarian, in those highly literate letters of common soldiers serving their Federal and Confederal nations do attest, that Judge being the today infamous Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Roger B. Taney, did so write in ruling of law:
So too do you, representative of those now in Federal Service or lately retired with pension, speak as a member of some “dominant race” of beings and claim a greater merit on some basis clear to you and your dominating fellows and gals than the rest of us, the mere plebes of society, the unwashed and lesser-educated. To all you all (to use a regional dialect form of a plural second person) we are but a subordinate and inferior class of beings, fit for nothing but paying the taxes and fees needed to support the Right and Proper entitlements of you, the dominant. Your class, the dominant class.
I object to your claims, and to those of your ‘class’ in FedGov who make such vile presumptions upon or abilities, our wealth, our labor and indeed upon our very personhood.
bvwRedux – Please read what I said very, very carefully. I specifically made no claim about whether government workers are underpaid or overpaid. What I did say is that to know whether that is so, an appropriate comparison has to be made. Think of it this way: if you had a bag that has 10 potatoes costing 10 cents each and a half-gallon container of orange juice costing $3.00, then the average price of each item in the bag would be 36 cents. Now, suppose you had another bag that just had orange juice in it. The average price of each item in that bag would be $3.00. Is the second bag “overpriced” relative to the first bag because the average price per item in it is higher than in the first? I don’t think anyone could say it was because, when appropriately comparing the item the two bags have in common, you find the item has the exact same price in both. This example, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with using average wages to make comparisons (and that would be true for any two groups).
BTW I find your comparison to Taney odious.
All Holidays should be on Friday
All adjustible “holidays” such as MLK day should be transfered to the preceding Friday.
The Monday Holiday system is a 1960 mentality about work and holidays
If someone was actually to celebrate MLK, you would go to the parade/rally and theoretically have dinner with your family or friends.
But obviously everyone is on their way home from the “long weekend” leading up to the so called holiday.
If the MLK day was on Friday, there would be time to travel Thursday night, participation in whatever event during the day and continuation into the evening with weekend to follow.
This Christmas was ideal being on Saturday with Friday off as “holiday”
Great for shopping, family Christmas and Sunday day after !!
Jack raises several good points. The Federal Government contracts out many low-pay positions. 99% of the secretarial and clerical positions are contracted.
What’s left are professional jobs – which pay more than most. Then add in the fact that so many Government offices are in high-cost areas. If you really want to save money, get Federal offices out of the Washington area – it commands a 24% pay premium.
Now, if you want to argue that holidays should fall upon a fixed date, instead of being moved to make a convenient three-day weekend, I’m all for it. People respect the holidays that fall on a fixed date – and disdain those that are moveable.
I’ll add one other point. The pension crisis is NOT a Federal issue. The Federal government saw this problem coming thirty years ago and changed their retirement system in 1983 to avert the problem. Kindly do not use the Federal workforce as a whipping boy for the greed of state and local government worker unions and the incompetent cowardice of state and local governments.
One little thing … regardless of the merits of the claim being made here, the BLS’s Employee Costs for Employee Compensation does _not_ cover the pay of Federal workers, only state and local governments.
Mike M.
The States, being 50 to the Federal 1, do dwarf the FedGov in pensions, but each State must balance its budget year by year, and except for the newly nascent BORROWING FROM THE FEDS to pay state pension obligations, the states would be already be reducing the unbearable burden of existing pension burdens, by simple dint of necessity.
Still, the FedGov pensions, while reformed are not fully accounted and in implementation full of tricks to hide the still massive costs being laid on due to them. Nor are the contributions towards pension (and that includes health care plans provided retirees and surviving close family) made by FedGov workers up to the level most citizens pay, either for pensions or for lifetime costs when they do not have pensions.
The Pension Crisis is indeed a Federal issue.
Reply 24 was by me. Sorry for the “name” cut and paste typo that shows it as “Mike M.”
I used to work as a contractor on an army proving ground that’s so far out of the way that it did a 4 day workweek so people wouldn’t have to commute. Any time there was a holiday it became a 3-day week instead. It was really cushy out there.
Heh; Heh; So; Who paid your ‘per diem’?
Veteran’s Day should be a paid-holiday only for those who have served, everybody else should have to work.
Ah, class envy rears its ugly head!
Jack the Federal Baron from Silver Spring:
So you, as a a member of the new Federal overlord class, are “orange juice”, and we the taxpaying peonage are mere potatoes? That’s a representative viewpoint from a typical professional FedGov overlord, so I’d say, and so did say.
That’s your problem really, being in the Federal government’s Districts vicinity. You can’t see what those 50 miles outside DC can see. The rest of us REALLY want to be free of all of you.
Not the you, fellow citizen, but the callous entitled you. The you who is so much more qualified then we potatoes.
Here, all you all FedGov sinecure holders — try working in the real world. If you are as great as all you all think you is, SURELY you will easily succeed and become wealthy, and even … add the the great Cornucopia of Liberty. Really.
Comfy positions in contractors contracting mostly to the behemoth or in Academia do not count.
bvwRedux @ 29: Hold your breath and count to 10 — then re-read my original post as well as my response to you. In both instance I made no claim about whether government workers are overpaid or underpaid. That is something I do not know because there no is solid information about it at this time. But what I do know is that basing the comparison on average wages is incorrect, for the reasons I laid out. You apparently have no rebuttal to what I have presented. So in each instance you have resorted to ad hominem attacks thereby only confirming what is apparent.
Jack of Silver Spring @ 30,
The diminutive nature of your command to me, “Hold my breath” is more to the man rather than the idea than my use of “federal baron”. My usages ARE TO THE IDEA as you espoused — that being you are a federal worker, making a case on behalf of federal workers that to your belief is an unassailable case because you are ‘agnostic’ to all things that might corrupt the purity of your logic.
My usages ARE TO THE IDEA as you espoused, not to you as a person. Your knock at me was to me as a person, not to my ideas.
Shall you also call me a mouth-breather? Or a bed-wetter? Oh, dear Federal Overloard, what other abuse may I accept as an offering of peace from you?
Is my arrogance the equal of yours?
bvwRedux@31
First off, I think you meant “derogarory” not “dimunitive.” Second, you say “I am making a case for Federal workers,” and then you say “I am agnostic to all things.” The thing I am agnostic to is whether the case you say I making is true or not. So, according to you, I am making a case, while I am sumltaneously not making the case. As Spock would say, “That is most illogical.” Finally, keep those ad hominems coming. They just keep confirming what I said at the end of my post @30. -:)
excellent points altogether, you simply gained a brand new reader. What would you suggest in regards to your post that you made a few days ago? Any positive?