dmi wrote:Sorry Jim, what is out of line is the private sector.
If you are trying to infer that from my comments, you are making a poorly considered, ridiculous extrapolation from what I said. If you are trying to twist my comments in order to manufacture a point to ridicule, you are making misrepresentations. Your comment is far from insightful and not the slightest bit witty.
Jim Frame wrote:Evan, my remarks weren't meant to suggest that there's currently anything illegal or statutorily unethical about moonlighting; rather they were meant to state my opinion that public agency employees should be barred by employment contract and legislated professional ethics from doing so. By the same token, I don't begrudge any public agency employee who takes full advantage of what I generally see as unconscionably lavish pension and OPEBs, but I'd like to see those compensation packages brought back to the real world.
I agree with you about the pensions. The State, and some local agencies connected to PERS have begun instituting tiered plans. Hired before XX/XX/19XX; you get in on the platinum plan, before YY/YY/20YY, you get the gold plan; after ZZ/ZZ/201Z, you can have the silver plan... that is if the whole system doesn't collapse from the weight of its own mismanagement, in which case we may be lucky to get pennies on the dollar of what was presented when we were hired. Personally, I would prefer a system that allows the employee more control over their retirement accounts. I've seen where some employees who spent their entire adult working lives with some level of government retire in their mid 50s with a pension nearly equal to their working salary. That's overboard.
Likewise, when many govt employees were complaining about how unfair the furloughs were a few years back, I was grateful to have a steady income. Just in case it gives you some sense of justice, I doubt that I will be able to retire until I'm at or near mandatory retirement age.
Years ago, and still with some agencies, there used to be a tradeoff in that working for the public sector (at least in surveying and other technical & professional fields) meant that you would generally make 10% to 15% less than your private sector counterparts on average, but that you would have a steadier income, less susceptible to the economic cycles, have benefits commensurate with those offered by many larger private employers, and have a pension that would greatly help provide for a comfortable retirement assuming that you've paid off your home and other major debts before then.
Some of that still holds true, depending upon one's particular vocation, location, agency, and (increasingly) date of hire. As a public employee in bad economic years, I was making, on average probably 15% to 20% more than my private sector counterparts. In good economic times, I'll make that much less, and probably more like 2/3 or 1/2 of my counterparts who own practices. I don't begrudge anyone that level of income when they are able to make it. Due to my family circumstances, I chose to go back to the relative stability of public sector employment.
What I objected to that I read in your statement was the idea that it is somehow a betrayal to the public if I spend part of my earned income on tools of the profession which would enable me to perform survey work outside of my agency employment. That is how practically every practice has ever started, by someone's employee saving to purchase equipment and eventually go into business. Assuming that I still have enough health to run a part-time practice, I want that option to supplement my retirement income someday.
Theoretically, a private sector employee is compensated according to the value they bring to the company. If an employee is looking for ways to increase income, the options are 1) advocate for a raise, 2) get a better job, 3) find something to do outside of hours that the employer has paid for. Employer and employee have more control over the first two choices than do their public sector counterparts. A private sector employer can offer a raise or a promotion if he feels the value is there.
In the public sector, the first is limited by an employees time in service. No raises until one's anniversary date and after a certain number of years, no raises unless everyone in the agency gets a similar cost of living adjustment. The 2nd is limited by specific allocations of a set number of defined positions. No one gets a promotion until someone in a higher position retires or leaves. A trend in many agencies for many years has been that when a higher position is vacated by retirement, job classifications are rewritten such that much of the responsibility of the recently vacated position is now in the job description of the next highest ranking employee, without benefit of promotion. The 3rd has certain statutory limitations to prevent the conflict of interest abuses as seen in the articles Mike provided.
Obviously, a private sector employee cannot ethically moonlight in a way that 1) competes with his primary employer, 2) diminishes the value that he is paid for by his primary employer, or 3) uses the time, materials, or resources paid for by the primary employer, or 4) exposes one's primary employer to any general or professional liability. Beyond that, if the primary employer has the expectation that employees should not engage in income producing activities outside of their primary employment, then the employer has the responsibility to provide enough work to provide that employee with as much work as they are willing and able to do, and to compensate them generously enough that a reasonable person wouldn't want to work outside of their primary employment.
Unlike in the private sector, there are laws for the public employee as to 3 of the 4 conditions I listed above (all but #2, which can be difficult to objectively quantify). In some cases, where the private sector employee who violates one or more of those principles exposes himself to termination, the public sector employee may be exposing himself to prosecution of a crime. Where the private sector employee is not legally compelled to make any financial disclosures to an employer (outside of any specific employment contract provisions), the public sector employee, once having reached a level of exercising independent judgment, is required by law to report any financial interests and income which may present the potential for a conflict to arise.
Mr. Smith wrote:Without the private sector the public sector does not exist because we (the private sector) pay for it all, We (the evil Corporations)
pay the public sector's wage, rents, lands, retirement, tax.....every last drop.
[/quote]
Correct. And that recognition is reflected in part of Dave K's last comment:
"Nothing frustrates honest hardworking public employees more than hearing the stories of private surveying going on out of orange vans. I point out the drunks down in Orange County were turned into the TV station by a frustrated coworker after several months of trying to get management to do something. Nothing will make a public agency move faster than a Director severely embarrassed in the press, unfortunately."
I for one have never attacked the private sector while holding the public sector up as some bastion of virtue. You won't even find me begrudging the millionaire CEOs of the big corporations their compensation. Nor will you find me referring to "the evil corporations" except in sarcasm toward the label, and with an EIB emphasis on "eeeeeevil".
I recently had occasion to inventory my experience. It's currently at just over 50% private sector (about 2 more years and it will be 50/50). It has been my experience that there is about the same amount of corruption in each, but that corruption manifests itself a bit differently. There is, at least in surveying, about the same average level of competence among licensees and LSITs in one sector as in the other (that is that IMO, surveyors in both sectors could stand a bit more training and self directed study). There is also, on average, about the same degree of conscientiousness toward doing a proper job, although the bell curve is, in my observation over my early career and more recently, much wider in the public sector (The hardest working, most conscientious as well as the laziest, and most careless surveyors I've worked with have been in the public sector).
But I am quite irritated at what appears to be repeated attempts to denigrate all public sector employees for having performed or for continuing to perform side work on their own time, in business ventures funded by their own savings, and many performing to acceptable to very high standards of care/practice based on accounts of a few who have abused their positions, their licenses, and/or the trust placed in them.
As the conversation progresses, it is becoming increasingly clear that moonlighting, however you wish to define it is simply one avenue of attack and that the underlying issue is a resentment of the compensation, benefits, and retirement that many public sector employees receive or are promised. People aren't much responding to the substance of any of the comments made by me or other public sector employees because accepting that there are those who care about a job well done, and that the examples of the bad actors are the exception rather than the rule doesn't fit the narrative.
I appreciate Jim's effort to clarify his statements. A couple of you appear to have nothing of substance to add, so have posted, in one case, a truth presented as if intended as a damning statement which actually comes across as tired rhetoric, and in another, just a really unintelligent attempt at a sarcastic witticism that really should be beneath the dignity of the person who posted it. And then another who appears to be trying to gin up a movement to, I don't know, advocate for laws limiting the ability of a public sector employee to engage in work outside of their primary employment. Those laws are already in place. Or maybe to advocate for laws that demand the proper amount of oversight when in responsible charge or for ensuring that all phases of a project are performed at least to the minimum standards expected of any professional who would perform that job. Those laws are already in place as well.
The problem isn't really that there are public sector surveyors running around performing poor surveys or not adequately supervising work they are supposedly supervising, or that there aren't laws designed to prevent that. And as both Jim F and Dave W pointed out, the economic impact on full-time practitioners is minimal (although I would contend that public sector moonlighting combined with unlicensed surveying can and has had a significant impact in some areas at certain times).
The real problem is twofold. First, not enough of the poor practitioners are being reported, either to BPELSG for their professional failings, or to their employers for doing private surveying using public time and resources. Second, I know that there are some people turning in some of these bad actors, but that BPELSG may not be doing anything in those particular cases. I'm not going to get into that one at this point. A couple of you know exactly where I'm coming from. That is a different problem that needs a different solution.
