Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Walker Establishes Cronyism Program

Unbelievable.

Even though Walker is claiming the state is broke and doesn't have enough money to fund things like education, women's health programs or services for sexual assault victims, he's found enough money to hand out more than three quarters of million dollars to "select" employees.  Or to be more accurate, cronies, just like Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen did.

Don't let them kid you. Merit has nothing to do with these raises. It's all about if the workers have been good little toadies.

Bruce Murphy, recently of Milwaukee Magazine, had warned of this:

Meanwhile the Walker administration has announced it will begin a system of merit pay for exceptional employees. The idea, ostensibly, is to make government work like the private sector. But private companies are driven by the profit margin and reward employees who contribute the most to that profitability. 
Not so in the public sector. Government leaders are inevitably tempted to reward political loyalty. And all the changes occurring under Walker are leading in that direction. Unions have lost all ability to represent workers. There will still be civil service protection for those threatened with firing, but it’s difficult to see how civil service rules will prevent cronyism in the awarding of merit raises. And that sends a message to all workers: Be loyal or you’ll never get ahead.
But we already knew that over a year ago, just a month after Walker was sworn in, that Madison had become the Crony Capitol of the World.



12 comments:

  1. "And that sends a message to all workers: Be loyal or you’ll never get ahead."

    Sounds pretty much like a private company to me. I'm assuming your not expecting a merit raise?

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    1. I don't work for the state. That is about the tenth time I've told you that. Now I'm beginning to see why you like Walker.

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    2. And for the tenth time you missed the point I am making. I know where you work and who you work for. Its seems you have had the public union mentality for so long that the real works seems foreign to you. While I like your writing (though sometimes its like reading fiction) I have yet to read a blog by a Harley Davidson employee trying to steer the corporate agenda or trashing the new CEO for union busting. And they are union too. The point was that if you disagree with the boss, your employment will be fairly short term. Unless of course your in a public union.

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    3. And for the tenth time, there is a thing call civil service code, which is made to protect public employees since they cannot follow the normal routes that private sector workers follow. Sorry, we are employees, not serfs.

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    4. I am left wondering why public employees need to be treated so different than private sector workers?

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  2. @I must be racist

    Loyalty is generally a good thing at work and at other places. However, there are jobs where the job description requires you to be loyal to the citizens of Wisconsin, taxpayers, users of a park or library system, not your boss.

    Merit pay should be for excellent work. Someone starts new programs, roots out fraud saving taxpayer dollars, stuff like that.

    If loyalty to a person for political reasons is the measure for the merit pay, there could be a conflict of interests type thing developing.

    And, it is not a private business. The government provides services, it is not there to make a profit.

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    1. Then who are these loyal employees accountable to? Surely they arent elected by their "bosses". No, they are accountable to the elected officials and the elected officials are accountable to the clients (voters). When my clients praise me, I forward that praise to my employees knowing I could not have earned that praise without them. Since when did the low level employees run government? It seems you live under public union protection as well.

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    2. We are obligated to the public. What you're advocating is called corruption and it is illegal and in violation of civil service codes. Thank goodness there are still some of us that have ethics to keep people like you and Walker in check.

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    3. So the civil service codes require that you not be accountable to your superiors? Corruption? Its how the real world works. Somethings been corrupted here alright.

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  3. The fact that Walker's administration has in place NO formal method for evaluating performance for a merit-based system (as in private industry) only confirms that these bonuses are being paid now (1) to buy "silence" from staffers who know too much about Walker's "problems", (2) to retain staffers who see how Walker's "sausage" is being made and who want out ASAP, and, (3) to buy "loyalty" instead of progressive contributors who question and work toward improvement.
    His bonus programs are a crock. Anyone in the private sector knows that given the circumstances of a STILL unbalanced budget, and, massive cuts to education, social and environment/safety programs.

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    1. You make the only good point in this discussion, The interesting question is why bonuses within a government that is so broke it needs to ask its employees to take a cut. An excellent question for the debate I hope they have before the election.

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    2. He did answer that very question this morning on upfront. To my satisfaction I will add.

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