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Federal Employees Don’t Need Another Holiday




Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for what you have and to try to help those who have less.

Consider the plight of federal employees.

Those who are in their first three years of service get a mere 13 vacation days, 13 sick days and 10 paid federal holidays every year.

It gets worse. From years four through 15, federal employees get a meager 20 vacation days, and after year 15, it’s 26 days, with the sick days and federal holidays remaining stagnant at 13 and 10, respectively.

Where is Sally Struthers when you need her? “Won’t you please help these poor people?”

So now, according to a report at GovernmentExecutive.com, federal employees are petitioning Barack Obama, US president, via the “We the People” website, to declare the day after Thanksgiving a federal holiday.

“Federal employees have suffered years of little to no cost-of-living increases in their pay,” the petition reads.

“Morale is at an all-time low, and a paid day off to spend with their families would go a long way towards making employees feel appreciated.”

Oh really? Jazz Shaw of HotAir.com responded to this plea as most taxpayers should: Morale “may be at ‘an all-time low’ among government employees, but let me assure you that it hasn’t been much better out in the real world.

You may have had a couple of years with too low of a cost-of living-increase (oh boo hoo), but for far too many of the rest of us, there haven’t been raises of any sort during the majority of the ‘Obama recovery.’”

Further, as Mr. Shaw rightly points out, a Cato Institute report notes that federal employees on average earned 78 percent more in total compensation than private-sector workers in 2014– $119,000 annually in salary, benefits and pension, compared with $67,000 for taxpayers.

And these people are already getting holidays that almost no one in the private sector sees, such as the birthdays of George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., and even Columbus Day, despite all the social-justice warrioring against the Italian explorer.

There are more than 2.7 million federal workers.

Providing another paid day off to them is a ridiculous giveaway and a slap in the face to the hard-working people who have to trudge out on Black Friday to pay for it.

Federal employees want the day off with pay? Fine. They can do what every other American has to do: Take a vacation day.

And while they’re at it, they can take up a more worthy cause for people who are actually in need.–Las Vegas Review Journal



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