One of the toughest things a worker can go thru is being told he, or she, is being laid off. I also know a few chairpersons who will tell you it is a gut-wrenching process for them to inform their staff about a lay-off. Recently, we've been hearing central authority departments telling their workers they must work a few days for free. The response is,'Are you kidding?' what is the difference between these two scenarios?
In both cases, there's not enough money to pay the employees. But the likeness stops there.
If we look at a personal company that manufactures goods, or offers a service to clients, we sometimes see customers paying for what they are getting. The business can not afford to keep the employees on payroll because their services are not needed. At least their services are not being paid for by the client. In this description of the reason for a layoff of employees, there's an obvious connection between what the client was paying for and the services or goods they were getting for that payment.
It is a bit different. In our tax cash system today we do not have a direct relationship between payment rendered and services received. And plenty of the goods and services provided by our government agencies are placing a higher demand on government employees in this economic downturn.
But most govt programs are paid for out of the general fund. Or worse yet, they are legislated by congress without funding and the states are required to pay the bill.
And domestically we see a desire to pay for stadiums and convention centers with restaurant surcharges and taxes on rental cars and hotel rooms. Taxes on property generally pay for a number of other services such as neighborhood streets, schools, environmental cleanup, and salaries of the town mayor.
The excuse for not listing them seems to be that taxes alter from location to location. But it would be enlightening to see a total of all taxes and surcharges that go to government programs compared with the total salary of all citizens in the country. That would give us a great idea of what we have gotten ourselves into with our tax laws.
During our recent economic issues plenty of money streams dried up. Government departments are being asked to keep on delivering the goods and services with much less money. Not only are we expecting government to deliver the common goods and services, but also we are asking them to handle an augmenting need for unemployment help and support for indigent families.
The revenue deficit to the government coffers is huge. The result on taxes as people quit buying automobiles and furniture, cancel vacations, and don't eat out all adds up. That all goes hand-in-hand with a ten percent unemployment rate.
So, how does one make up for this type of deficiency in the money available to your government services? It isn't easy. If you asked regime employees to take a ten percent pay cut, that would not cover the inadequacy in revenues.
If you were to try to reduce the pay of executive employees by ten percent, you would hear plenty of screaming. It would sound really much like asking them to work twenty-five days without pay. That's what ten percent of a 250 day work-year is. We need their work now more than before the business crisis. Govt isn't like the personal sector where you can cut off goods and services when the payments stop.
Does this problem have an answer? I can certainly tell you there is not an answer that everyone would like to hear. Until we have more people employed and paying their taxes, the government is going to have a very hard time paying for the goods and services we all expect them to deliver. Neither the employees, the unions, nor the public wants to see government employees laid off. The most rational and fair answer would be to offend everyone a little bit. You can do that by requiring Furlough Days. Furlough Days let everyone keep their job and let the union maintain its membership. Furlough Days also let health benefits continue for all employees.
Government simply can't continue to pay workers the same as they have been paid. Unless we reduce the actual cost of government, the use of Furlough Days is the only way to keep the goods and services provided by our government agencies flowing.
For more information on surving a layoff or furlough, look at the
Job News.