Price collusion is illegal when businesses do it, but it blessed by force of law when done by workers at a company.

I support collective bargaining in the context of right to work laws. Outside that context, its just extortion—and it leads to bad things (see Michigan)

For those that have a free choice and chose to be in a union anyway, I don’t have much respect for people who extort their employers rather than try to earn as much as they can in an open market.

And as for union leaderships - commies and thugs. Every single one of them, and I got no problem saying it to their faces.

We’d be better off if we just turned the entire Republican Congressional organization on its head.

Unions got too powerful, too corrupt and screwed their own selves. But they also just were no longer needed as worker rights legislation got passed and as we moved away from an industrial economy.

All that’s changed. They’re ruining the economy and influencing politics. They have ruined the auto industry and driven more jobs offshore than cheap foreign labor.

God, they make me sick.

http://www.fcw.com/online/news/153600-1.html

http://ohmygov.com/blogs/a-day-in-the-life/archive/2008/08/22/federal-employees-go-awol.aspx

http://www.ktka.com/news/2008/aug/21/nicejobifyoucangetaway_it/

And if you would like to know more about the calculations, see the full report or contact Coburn’s office.

I assume, opporutnity cost, lost potential, lost time, loss of productivity, lost wages, lost manpower, etc…are all factored in.

Hey, if we can monetize a life for trial lawyers, then I am certain there are ways to put a dollar amount to a government union employee’s time (or lack thereof).

Sometimes you might be late on soething, and have to pay penalties and interest.

Sometimes something gets lost, and you get sued and lose.

Sometimes you have to hire extra people (who themselves end up AWOL, leading to the need for more people hired than you think), and have to train and accomodate them.

First, a federal employee, most any public employee actually, once hired is either at work during scheduled hours and days or on leave during those hours and days. There are various forms of paid leave as detailed in the report and then there is an absence without leave which may or may not be authorized and this report does not make that distinction. The distinction may or may not be observed in the underlying data but it is not reported in the formal report. There are many forms of authorized absence with out leave or leave without pay, e.g., educational or other sabbaticals, FMLA leave after paid leave is exhausted, voluntary leave without pay for personal or health reasons - this is quite common when an employee has a chronic or even terminal illness, has run out of paid leave, but the employer chooses to keep him/her on as an employee for benefits or simply for humanitarian reasons.

Second, such reports make the good managers look bad. The way NOT to show up on such a report is to not dock employees for AWOL so you don’t have to report it or simply not track it as appears to be the case with State. It may well be that the poster child agencies, VA and Treasury, are more fastidious about docking employees’ pay for AWOL and the low AWOL agencies such as Education simply ignore AWOL - an entirely believable proposition if you’ve ever dealt with educrats.

And third, it is entirely plausible that the Democrat Administration did little or nothing to control unauthorized absences and the incoming Republican Administration went on a program of adult supervision to track and control it. In an organization the size of the federal government it would take some years to get your managers in place and on such a program, which would in turn show a steady increase in the AWOL hours. Fundamentally, if AWOL time wasn’t being tracked before, it means lots of employees were skipping work and still getting paid. At least if it is being reported as AWOL, they’re probably not being paid, a good step in the right direction. Now next, somebody can start disciplining and dismissing employees for unauthorized absence; it can be done.

Since 2001, federal employees at 18 departments and agencies were absent without leave (AWOL) at least 19.6 million hours.

…the loss of productivity costs us about $7-$10 billion a year.

If my math is correct, then we have $7-10B/yr / 19.6M hrs/7 yrs = cost of around $3K/hr give or take $500. Even if the $7-10B is for the seven-year period, then that gives a rate of around $430/hr +/- $80. If we’re talking salary and benefits paid for no-shows, then it seems hard to believe it would be more than maybe $75/hr or something in that range.

Am I missing something?