Are public sector workers overpaid?

Yes they are overpaid and underworked. Have few hours and great benefits. The recession is affecting all and some of us have lost our jobs to cut backs. The public sector should be greatful they have a job and are able to feed their families.

Ya think??????? I am so sick and tired of hearing these overpaid, over-privieiged, rude, undisiplined, underworked crybabies whinning about how hard they've got it! I am sick of C.U.P.E. and O.P.S.U. and their too powerful, militant leaders bullying "we the taxpayers" around so they can have more! More! More! I wish our elected representatives at all levels had the guts to ban these greedy unions! My municiple tax bill can no longer afford to keep these parasites in a lifestyle they've become too accustomed to.

And here's another beef I have with these overpaid crybabies. Whatever becomes a privieige that we poor taxpayers can only dream about, these crybabies deem it a right. Privileges like the benefits they have, the sick days (I don't get sick days!), and early retirement are only dreams for most of us, unless you are a civil servent. Then it's a right! if it were up to me, no civil servant would be allowed to earn any more than minimum wage! Not one cent more!

And I can just hear the attacks from those servants now! "You wouldn't do my job for what I have to put up with!" Oh? Well, if maybe you realised that you are not God, like too many of you think you are, and you did realise that "We, the taxpayers" are, maybe we wouldn't treat you like dirt! You get treated the way you rightly deserve! The worst of the worst are municiple By-Law officers, anyone working for the Ontario Ministry Of Transport, and employees of Canada Revenue Agency. These people are the rudest of the rudest!

So to all civil servants everywhere, to you I say, Kiss My You-Know-What! You have it better than any of us, so shut up!

It's the same situation as GM; 60% of the employees doing 95% of the work thru too much sick time, compensation, plain laziness blah blah blah, you get the picture. And don't forget incompetence at the top. Their big advantage - nothing to sell , just keep hitting the taxpayer!!

The public sector workers in general are not over paid, they maybe in some cases underpaid. However, the key is that those people who worked in the public sectors are under pressure from all sides, their political masters, their bosses within the area, and the general public. There are always exceptions!. There are thos who use their status to make others look uncomfortable......! PC

I am not opposed to anyone making a decent wage however the TAX base in Ontario Canada is at a level that needs to be addressed. Stop wasting Tax $$$. In Windsor certain workers were given Blackberry's, others given Credit cards to Home Depot, City workers are filling there gas tanks at ensecured pumps, city vehicles are used for employee personal bussiness. The list of abuse goes on and on. Far too many days off, and the actual work being performed is not, employees cannot be trusted and the Department heads and city Councel employees and union all need to take responsability for what is happening in Windsor. The theft of city property and therefore Tax dollars that has been wasted over the past decade could have covered the entire cost of the current dispute between the two They all need to look at themselves and repent what they have caused. Privatization would certainly eliminate these abuses.

I am a public sector worker and pay the same taxes as anyone else. I am highly educated and motivated individual and love my job with the city. I get a modest 2 weeks and 3 days a year vacation and 5 sick days a year with a great pension. Most positions in my department are easily 10-25% underpaid compared to their private sector equivilents where I came from. The benifets are less then what I had in the private sector. The pension was not offered in the private sector but RRSP matching was available. I made the change to avoid the ups and downs with the private sector (ie. job security) after getting laid off twice in 5 years because of the fluxuating demand. I decided to take a 20% pay cut to go to the city for job security. I work twice as hard as I did in the private sector and do not benifit from perks from clients or christmas parties or golf tournaments as in the private sector, but I love the job which is mostly customer service. I do not agree that public sector workers as a whole are overpaid, but I do agree that private sector workers need better representation for more job security. Niether one is keeping up with rising the rising cost of living.

Not only are public sector workers overpaid, they don't work as hard for that overpayment. That is the bigger issue in my mind, since their lack of decication and work ethic costs the various levels of government more even than the difference in pure wages. Thus average private sector workers face a triple issue; high taxes from lazy overpaid public sector workers, poor services from those same disgruntled (why they are disgruntled when they are overpaid and underworked is a topic for another day) as well as decreasing buying power and greater pressure from employers for ever more hours for less pay.

We need to lower public sector wages, hire workers more dedicated to providing services for a fair wage with a courteous goodwill for their privelege of job security and lower taxes and tighten private sector employment standards.

Some people just don't get it !
We're in one of the worst economic times in our country's history.
No Time for this selfish rhetoric that unions are trying to sell us.
Private or (especially)Public sectors must fall in line with whatever your situation dictates.Example being CAW workers.. our friends in Windsor & Toronto might just want to rethink their very Foolish ways.The cities are struggling to meet their commitnent and just might have to sacrifice a few public jobs to the private sector because our friends got too arrogant & expensive with their entitlements.

I have worked in both the public and private sector. Recently I retired from the Public Sector with over 30 years of service. Because the Organizational Objectives of the Public and Private Sector are different the argument will never be resolved. This is not an apple to apple comparison. During my career I spent a lot of time giving people their initial on the job training and subsequent mentoring. I saw an awful lot of people enter the Public Service who took significant pay cuts from their jobs in the Private Sector to do so. Just after entering the Public Service I was in an elevator with two men from the Private Sector late on a Friday afternoon. One of them said to the other, "I wish when I returned from overseas I had taken a job in the Government." The other man said, "Before you say that talk to someone who has been in the Government for 25 or 30 years." After 30+ years in I can tell you Public Sector employment is not for everyone. In the job I had there were very few 37.5 hour weeks. Because we were "professionals" there was little or any consideration for "overtime". Professionals don't work "overtime", they have a job to do. Examine the mental and physical health of people leaving the Public Service. Determine the length of time they live after leaving the job. Then, ask the question regarding whether they were paid too much.

A great pastime in this country is to criticize the public service. It is one of the few "Canadian" institutions we have left. A lot of the services offered could be privatized, but then what? Fast food style service by people being paid minimum wage with a minimal grasp of the English or French language. Think about it next time you try to obtain a passport, or have to deal with taxation issues. Most public servants have a genuine care for the job they do. Do not demonize public servants because of the antics of their political masters....they do the job regardless of whichever party is in charge. The unions have negotiated fair and reasonable collective agreements for their members, yet on the Federal level, the Government has either frozen wages or rolled back fairly negotiated cost of living increases. How often does this happen en masse in the private sector (with the exception of the auto industry)?
As for "perks" or pensions alluded to in some of the earlier postings, most government workers will not have an opportunity to work their 30 or 35 years to collect their pension. The "perks" like sick leave, paid vacation, bereavement leave etc. again were obtained through the collective bargaining process.
Be thankful for public servants regardless of what they do, would you do it knowing how much criticism you would be subject to on a daily basis?

I worked in the public sector for many years. I was responsible for negotiating deals with my counterparts in the private sector. At every meeting I attended I was clearly the lowest paid person at the table.

part time public Workers(I work at a college in ontario) get less then everyone, sure I get a decent wage (under $18/hour)but I do not get Vacation pay, I do not get paid for being sick, I do not get paid for Stat-Holidays.

I am appalled to think that people are thinking that public sector employees are overpaid.

The reality is that most public sector employees are well underpaid for the work they do on behalf of the public. They do job after job with little if any thanks. In fact, the media only appears to report on the compliants, and the fact that public sector executives are overpaid - which is certainly true - instead of reporting on all the good things that the lower rungs of public sector employees do, especially with lower and lower budgets to do the same job expected of the public sector as per 1970s expectations with less than 1800s monies. Do you think that's feasible?

The only public sector employees who are overpaid are the deputy ministers, the crown corporation chairpersons, the agency heads, and so forth who are cabinet appointees, not the poor union workers whose only protection from losing any more ground is the union who have to fight for the rights that most Canadians are seeing eroded by the CFIB constituents.

Moreover, it is awful to see the CFIB request lower wages for workers, when the majority of Canadians cannot even make ends meet. It is the public sector who is fighting t keep workers wages up in order to keep the economy going.

If the CFIB gets its way, and public sector employee wages go down, who is left to buy the products the CFIB wishes to sell? There will be no one left to buy anything, and you will see the economy tank like never before, in all sectors.

Instead, the public should be supporting increases in the wages of the public sector employee, except for the executives, because it is the public sector that provides the services that the public is in need of, that the public demands, that the public expects, that the public pays not enough for, and it is the public sector that is fighting to keep the general worker's rights protected all over, despite the battles from CFIB members.

Privat Wurkur is an idiot! And all the public emplyee bashers are green eyed morons.Thank god for responses like JB, the brave soldier and others on this board. M ybrother puts his life on the line every day to keep you people safe from the ore unsavoury elemnts of society (yes he is a police officer and no he is not just a high school grad he has a University degree)
I graduted 2nd in my law school class, did a masters at Harvard and after a two years at a Bay street I took a huge ay cut, jumnped to the Crown Proscecutors office where I slave away for hours happily looking for new and innovative ways to beat the high priceds defense lawyers that sheild some of this country's most dispecable criminals. I have no end of offers to jump back to private sector but someone has to serve the public. Yes I am a public employee. I make a six figure income so I am doing fine, but guess what? my counterparts in the private sector make minimum twice my salary and I dont complain. I chose my path and that is how the dice rolls in society. Fact is most private sector companies (mom and pop establishments excepted) are nothing more that highway robbers keeping all the revenue at the top (pyramid style) to fatten CEO and top executives and to make rich shareholders wealthier and thus happier and sometimes they even take money that the company dont have to support their lavish lifestyles while laying off emplyees and cutting benefits (I prosceute white collar crimes also so I know). My sister is a public health nurse with the City of Tornto and she and her team was responsible for "saving" Toronto" from SARS last time around, putting their lives on the line to serve the greater good. Who is going to save the city if we have a full blown bird flu outbreak now? Not the public heath team now on strike I assure you (of you will never hear from city hall that these angles are part of the striking team you only hear about so called "greedy unskilled" garbage workers). Why should public employees be paid slave wages because some private employees are paid that way? We dont ask for the equivalent to private sector workers where their salry exceed ours so why should private sector workers want to see us paid like the lowest among them? You guys have been suckered by the politicians and business leaders who have no problem constantly giving themselves 30 percent raises year after year and increasing perks while wanting to crush workers beneath their boots (see mayor Miller and his merry gang of swindlers, see the federal and provincial politicians and not to mention the executives at Canada's fortune 500 companies, or do i even have to mention the criminals in the US banking industry?). Dont you people know that if we follow the lead of CFIB asnd the other anti-workers here in this country we may as well opt out of the G8 or OECD and join the third world congregation of banana republics. Wake up people you need to support the workers right to maintain a decent working evironment and demand that the private sector do the same rather than trying to make us all slaves to employers. ANd the saddest partis the striking civicworker main bone of contention is that the city want to reduce sick days from 18 a year to 3! Does such a drastic drop sound reasonable? They did not much care about the 0% wage increase offered they would have taken that And how can aan employer think it can unilatrally take away sick days that a worker had a right to bank and just eliminate it? Would any of you say to an employer OK go ahead just eliminate the vacation days I have, that I have already booked my family trip for, that you agreed I would get paid for, just wipe it out and instead replace it with 2 vacation days a year with no compensation.

Why dont you whiners get a life.You keep spouting off details and about benefits and wages of which you know nothing about. To the idiot (babu) what are you, a monkey,who quoted his friend, if you believe him you are stupid. There is no such thing as a GOLD plated pension for the average employee. These go to the big boys, just as they do in the private sector. By the way we contribute to this plan (14%) of our wages for 35 years. Do you ? uh uh, you piss it away then whine later, I have seen this many times. Every time a bad situation comes up, the public service bashing comes up. You people always complain about others in geralities, quoting this guy or the neighbor or whomever. You make me sick, you are a bunch of self centerd A####holes. If you think it is so great, get an eduction and try a competition, yes a competion. See how you rate..BONEHEADS. Oh yes, the pension is 70%, not 80%.and it is an average of the last six years. we do not get paid for unused sick leave. All PS workers sit around talking ?, they are lazy ? Where do you people come from ? As far as vote buying, the first thing the polititions do is screw the workers. Ah, Im finished, you bunch of P****S . I feel so much bettter now.

I am a municipal employee and I love my job. I consider myself fortunate to be in a position to help people.

I am not unionized. I don't complain (too much). I am not lazy. I have far more education than most indiduals (both public and private). I don't work shorter hours than my private sector neighbours - and - in fact - when you add evening meetings/customers arriving at 4:31 pm needing assistance/ and working through my lunch hour (all uncompensated) I typically work a 45-50 hour work week. Stats Canada will confirm that those hours represent an above average work week in Canada. I do not get my birthday off (unless I use one of my accrued vacation days) and I generally accrue less vacation days (based on years of service) than my private sector colleagues.

What's interesting is that just 2 years ago (and - my - how the economy has changed in that time) my professional colleuges working in the private sector were questioning why I stayed with the public sector when "there was a killing to be made if the private sector". For appreciation these private sector workers (and their families) were flown off to Hawaii for a week long retreat by their employer - nice tax write off subsidized by the rest of us. In contrast wife and I got a meal and dance at a local hotel and the roast wasn't even that good. My private sector friends regularly "met" Friday afternoons on the golf course for "meetings" I was very lucky if able to conduct 1 such "meeting" a year during supposed work hours.

Now - 2 years later - the glutenous private sector gravy train is derailed (those same individuals - above - are now terminated) and us public sector suckers who had the foresight to stay when times were crazy good (and we were consequently branded as foolish) are now overpaid lay abouts.

Sorry - I disagree - it's not the public sector that is at fault it's the private sector that must get its collective behinds in order and plan for all contingencies both good and bad. Unfortunately - the private sector emloyers/employees are unlikely to do this and will - again - mock us public sector smucks through the next upswing (and all this current pain - unfortunately - will have been forgotten). No lessons learned or - at least - remembered.

Regardless, through the next upswing I'll stay with my public sector employer and continue doing what I love.

No question, the gap between public and private sectors is increasing at an alarming rate. The side benefits, like 18 sick days and expense accounts are out of control and bear no relationship to the private sector. Also we are seeing more jobs in the private sectror structured such that the employees are not getting benefits etc. (not syaing this is good but simply to illustrate the growing inequities between public and private sectors.)
Governments at all levels need to bring wages including benefits in line with the private sector. It is inconcievable that the bests jobs in the country are in the public sector where there is no bottom line--- only to squeeze more out of the taxpayers. We have had enough!!!
Get a grip!!!!

I believe some public sector workers are overpaid. Alot of these people do not relize how lucky they are with their high wages and benefits. On top of it all, some get to keep their air miles that were accumulated while on government business. The government should pool all the airmiles, and use them for future employee flights. Some of the public sector jobs could be contracted out, as well. It's time to treat running the government more like a business, not a charity !

Just as a footnote to my comment, Maybe some of the whiners should learn to spell.(workur, puvlic,viulding).What's the matter, do you have speech impediment in your finger? Points go to the comment about the present financial crisis brought about by the BIG BOYS, bankers, CEO's etc. Now we are at each others throat. Instead of complaining about what oher people have, better yourself. Are you going to be better off if somone else gets screwed ? Misery loves company I guess. To the hotel manager, how many of the 80 hours(that's a croc) do you spend sleeping behind the reception desk? Have a good night all .

God almighty,the comments keep getting more rediculous. Scott believes this and that, so what. Where do you people come from? We do NOT get AIR MILES, period end of story. Contracted out, That is a joke, you should see the CRAP we get back. projects totally screwed up.