Tag: government workers

Generous Benefit Plans Leading Government Employees to Be Nearly 40 Percent More Expensive than Private Sector

Daily Caller News Foundation
Office Work

State and local government workers were roughly 40% more expensive to employ than private sector employees in the second quarter of 2024, largely due to generous benefit plans, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Tuesday.

Total compensation costs, including wages, salaries and benefits, averaged $43.94 per hour for private sector employees, approximately 40% less than the $61.37 average hourly compensation cost for state and local government workers, according to the BLS data. The disparity was primarily driven by pricey government benefit plans, with costs averaging $13.04 per hour for private industry workers, over 80% less than the $23.57 per hour in benefit costs for their state and local government counterparts.

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Biden Vaccine Mandate for Government Workers Upheld in Court

Michigan Star Staff

On Thursday, a federal court upheld Joe Biden’s mandate that all federal government employees be forced to take a coronavirus vaccine.

The New York Post reports that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Louisiana issued a ruling that overturned a lower court’s decision to block the mandate, which was first issued in September of 2021. In January, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown had ruled the mandate unconstitutional, determining that the rule constituted an overstep in federal authority.

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Commentary: When the Regular Joes Shrugged

Michigan Star Staff

Until recently, conservatives were the party of business. They defended the business world not as a necessary evil or because of its efficiencies, but because they thought it exemplified an enterprising, individualist morality. It respected rights of contract, served as an arena for creativity, and allowed socially useful competition. Even now, Republicans condemn the Left’s programs as creeping socialism, seemingly forgetful of the last decade in which corporations became the vanguard of the cultural revolution.

Part of American conservatives’ embrace of capitalism comes from its historically central place in American life. Americans had tamed the wilderness and become an industrial powerhouse by the middle of the 20th century. Most of this activity was rooted neither in the pursuit of glory nor religious conviction—as, perhaps, with Spanish colonialism—but by ordinary economic self-interest, the spirit of Yankee ingenuity.

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