I'm ready to leave

[DOCMECH]

I was a teacher of Automechanics for 17 years with the NYC Board of Education(as it was called then. Now the Department of Education). I left and transfered my time to my present job of Automechanic for the NYC Department of Correction. As of January 24, 2009 I will have completed 24 years of service. I am in my early 50's and am inroled in the Auto 25 retirement program. (50 years of age and 25 years of service) For a while I was hearing that there was an early retirement incentive in the works. now I'm hearing nothing. Has anyone heard anything and I welcome any feed back.

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

It looks like, worst case, you only have to work 1 more year. That sounds pretty good to me.

[DOCMECH]

In the past I've seen where as long as you have the required age they would give you one month for each year of service toward your pension so you would leave early. My union like most have given up the unborn. This means that newly hired people will start at a lower salery. On top of that the present practice is to not replace meachanics but hire Auto Service workers at 1/2 the salary. So the City of New York will save roughly $30,000 a year on salary and new employees only get 10 day of vacation a year not the 27 that I get. I went into the NYCERS (New York City Employees Retrirement System) and calculated that with an incentive like this and only federal taxes withheld my take home pension will be roughly $70 less a month than my base take home salary now! The biggie is also that I get my medical coverage as if I completed my full term.

[DOCMECH]

I'd be happy if they let me leave this month.

[DOCMECH]

With Mayor Blloomberg's announcement yesterday that 600 people were going to get pink slips and 2400 more jobs will be gone through attrition. Do you think that early retirement incentives will be coming or will he just make us wait? I am so ready!

[DOCMECH]

Tuesday I'll see the people at the retirement system and another retirement assoc. I'l get numbers and procedures for both early retirement (if there's an incentive) and if I retire my normal date (march 2010).

[freebird5825]

i can't help out, but i actually pondered working for NYS if i ever decide to un-FIRE. god forbid!
hey, i'm only 50 and i may have songs to sing yet. i was thinking about working part time for VESID (NYS Dept of Education) as a technical consultant for assistive technology for the disabled. who knows?
but i will be interested to see how many NYS employees we have here, active or retired.
i hope you can escape as planned. you will LOVE FIRE!!!!!

[DOCMECH]

I was doing my usual searches on the internet and can across this. I know this is talking about it at the state level and I hope it will trickle down to the city level. Another thought came to mind. If the government lays off people, that will have a detrimental effect on our already fragile economy. If they offer retirement incentives those retirees will still be in the game to spend money and help along the economy. What do you think? I'm keeping my finders crosses!
Gov. pondering early retirement packages - Crain's New York Business

[leftbucket]

Years ago I recall reading an article in Reader's Digest about
a 20 year NYC sanitation worker who got a job with NYPD,
went to the police academy for 2 weeks and then retired
as a police officer. I have no idea if NYPD ret. board fixed
the glitch for future employees, but thought I'd throw it
out there as an interesting anecdote.

Other thoughts, though... Does sick leave
count or help? Are you allowed to exchange,barter,or buy
any from coworkers? Do they allow any "air-time"
purchases?

-LB

[Frugality_of_Apathy]

Originally Posted by DOCMECH

I was doing my usual searches on the internet and can across this. I know this is talking about it at the state level and I hope it will trickle down to the city level. Another thought came to mind. If the government lays off people, that will have a detrimental effect on our already fragile economy. If they offer retirement incentives those retirees will still be in the game to spend money and help along the economy. What do you think? I'm keeping my finders crosses!
Gov. pondering early retirement packages - Crain's New York Business

The government doesn't create jobs.

No I know it's counter intuitive because you see all those people working for the government, but in terms of economics are essentially welfare and do not contribute to the economy at all.

You may be familiar with the Broken Window Fallacy and if you step back you'll see that's all a government job is.

Where does the money come from to create that job? was it the result of an exchange in goods or services such that value may have been added to the system? No it wasn't. That money was taken from somebody rather than exchanged. It makes no difference to our system if one person spends his money to buy a $20 steak or if half that money is given to someone else and 2 $10 steaks are purchased, except for the fact that now twice as much work had to be done to spend that money.

It's the exchange of money and production of goods that builds an economy. Since the government does not own commercial factories there is no production done for the worker to earn that money and we end up dividing the money up to serve basic needs artificially shifting demand from quality goods to lower quality goods.

[haha]

Originally Posted by Frugality_of_Apathy

The government doesn't create jobs.

No I know it's counter intuitive because you see all those people working for the government, but in terms of economics are essentially welfare and do not contribute to the economy at all.

You may be familiar with the Broken Window Fallacy and if you step back you'll see that's all a government job is.

Where does the money come from to create that job? was it the result of an exchange in goods or services such that value may have been added to the system? No it wasn't. That money was taken from somebody rather than exchanged. It makes no difference to our system if one person spends his money to buy a $20 steak or if half that money is given to someone else and 2 $10 steaks are purchased, except for the fact that now twice as much work had to be done to spend that money.

It's the exchange of money and production of goods that builds an economy. Since the government does not own commercial factories there is no production done for the worker to earn that money and we end up dividing the money up to serve basic needs artificially shifting demand from quality goods to lower quality goods.

Could you explain how private sector services are fundamentally different from government services in an economic sense?

I am not being argumentive; this is something tha tI occasionally think about but cannot really arive at a good way to look at it.

Ha

[Frugality_of_Apathy]

Originally Posted by haha

Could you explain how private sector services are fundamentally different from government services in an economic sense?

I am not being argumentive; this is something that I occasionally think about but cannot really arive at a good way to look at it.

Ha

What is the difference between a private and a public position?

In the private sector a service position only exists if it helps a company produce more cheaper or the service is thought to be valuable enough such that people will pay for it. Public sector positions are there to fill a position created by a regulation of the government.

If the EPA makes a rule that only so much of a toxin can be released by a company, a public sector employee will go through all of the calculations and monitor the system and then fine the company or make them buy a more expensive permit to continue doing business. This ends up in the cost of producing a material to rise but doesn't actually help produce anything of value. A private sector consultant dealing with the same regulation the government issued will go to a company, make all the calculation and monitor the process and tell the company that by changing a process or adding a bit of equipment they can stop emitting that toxin and run the system more efficiently, resulting in less waste and a cheaper cost of producing the material.

Look at security. In the private sector a company will hire a security guard to make sure no one vandalizes their property and they can continue running without downtime. In the public sector, a company will pay for police, but they aren't going to guard their property, They'll wait until some penniless punks destroy a piece of equipment and then go hunt them down. After the police catch them they may fine them or send them to prison but at mot the company is ony going to get the the money for the piece of equipment from an insurance company and then end up paying higher rates or losing their insurance. They are never goung to get back the cost of being shut down for a week because their equipment was destroyed in the public sector.

The private sector positions are there because they fill a need. The public sector positions are there because the government has created a situation that requires a public employee to regulate. The government is essentially breaking a companies window and then making the company pay someone to fix it. There may be many people working, but there is nothing productive being done because if a position was actually necessary than someone would be willing to pay for it.

Much of the work done by the government is punishing victimless crimes and requiring fees for work not performed. If you put an addition on your house you hire a contractor. When you had that addition built a public employee inspected it and signed off that it was well built, but if it collapses the city does not assume any responsibility. He collected a fee from your construction but what valuable service did they add then? If you had an insurance company inspector come and inspect your addition and it collapsed than the insurance company would pay for it and then go after the contractor to pay them back for his poor construction.

Would you hire a private investigator to come to your house because a neighbor kid spray-painted your fence or someone stole your $10 lawn chair? Maybe if it happened enough you would, but for a one time occurrence of course you wouldn't, but you call the police. Having the police come by for something trivial like that costs more in man hours than if you had hired a private investigator. Obviously the time spent investigating the case of the missing lawn chair is not producing enough value to warrant the money spent, but what's worse is that the money wasted on that is taken from people who if they had control of the money would have spent it on something that was worth at least the amount of money they were trading.

I could go on and on but the main thrust is: Every dollar not used by the government is either invested in companies, which makes them increase production, or given to companies in exchange for goods. Every dollar spent by the government is essentially paying someone not to work since society does not value their job enough to pay them directly for it.

[DOCMECH]

Well sick leave can effect my ending. They have Terminal Leave (not terminally ill but terminating your employment) There are two ways that it can be calculated. One is that for every 10 years of service you will receive 30 calendar days off. The other is 1 day for 2 sick days left. There are many other rules that are used depending on job title, but one that seems to be able to hurt me is that 17 years of my service was not as an Auto mechanic with the NYC Department of Correction but as a Teacher of Auto mechanic for the NYC Board of Education (now the NYC Department of Education). I was told that because my previous title wasn't listed under Appendix A (part of a DC 37 contract?) that the teaching time won't count for my terminal leave. So instead of getting 1 1/2 months of terminal leave I might only get 23 days. I'm getting a run around trying to get a definite answer from the people in personnel. I need to know this because I was told that I must use up my vacation time first.
I can swap sick time with co-workers but I was told that the trade is a 3 for 1 deal. I don't know what air time is.
I hope to get an answer from personnel this week so I can map out my last year of service. In other words coordinate sick time, vacation time, and terminal leave. By February the vacation list comes around so I need to be prepared.

[leftbucket]

Ok, so you'll get a month or more of terminal leave
depending on their ruling. Good luck with that.

How does the 3 for 1 trade work? What for what?
How much sick and vacation leave do you have?

Air time is extra time that some plans allow you to
purchase (by law, up to five years, I think) in order
to get closer to retirement. If you haven't heard of it,
your plan probably doesn't allow it. (Mine doesn't
allow it either).

March 2010 will be here before you know it.
Hang in there.
-LB

[OhSoClose]

Originally Posted by Frugality_of_Apathy

The government doesn't create jobs.

No I know it's counter intuitive because you see all those people working for the government, but in terms of economics are essentially welfare and do not contribute to the economy at all.

You may be familiar with the Broken Window Fallacy and if you step back you'll see that's all a government job is.

Where does the money come from to create that job? was it the result of an exchange in goods or services such that value may have been added to the system? No it wasn't. That money was taken from somebody rather than exchanged. It makes no difference to our system if one person spends his money to buy a $20 steak or if half that money is given to someone else and 2 $10 steaks are purchased, except for the fact that now twice as much work had to be done to spend that money.

It's the exchange of money and production of goods that builds an economy. Since the government does not own commercial factories there is no production done for the worker to earn that money and we end up dividing the money up to serve basic needs artificially shifting demand from quality goods to lower quality goods.

Hmmm. Have you ever heard of any country anywhere that only had private jobs and no government jobs. Nope. I mean, if it was possible to have no government, they would have done it somewhere, right? Regardless of how much you may dislike government, many of those gov't jobs are necessary to support the private sector. That's because the private sector is dependent on government workers -- yeah, the policemen, firemen, soldiers, court personnel -- for a society in which the private sector guys can do their "productive" stuff. Of course, you can probably think of some government job that seems to have no value. I certainly can. But the idea that there is no government job that has any economic value makes little sense -- except, perhaps, in some Utopian fantasy.

[DOCMECH]

Originally Posted by leftbucket

Ok, so you'll get a month or more of terminal leave
depending on their ruling. Good luck with that.

How does the 3 for 1 trade work? What for what?
How much sick and vacation leave do you have?

Air time is extra time that some plans allow you to
purchase (by law, up to five years, I think) in order
to get closer to retirement. If you haven't heard of it,
your plan probably doesn't allow it. (Mine doesn't
allow it either).

March 2010 will be here before you know it.
Hang in there.
-LB

I was told that the way it works is that If I worked with you and you were short time, I could give you some of my time. For every day I give you it costs me three. The agengy is the one who really gains.

[leftbucket]

Well, that is a strange exchange system. You're right, the
agency is the one that wins.

But, if you really want to go now, just find 10-15 coworkers
who are willing to barter off some of their sick leave. If
each of them gives up a few weeks in exchange for something
you have to offer, you're done.

-LB

[DOCMECH]

I'm waiting for tomorrow's announcement from Governer Paterson. They say he might include a retirement incentive. This should trickle down to the city level. See my last link.

[freebird5825]

i surely hope this turns out well for you!

[haha]

Originally Posted by leftbucket

Well, that is a strange exchange system. You're right, the
agency is the one that wins.

But, if you really want to go now, just find 10-15 coworkers
who are willing to barter off some of their sick leave. If
each of them gives up a few weeks in exchange for something
you have to offer, you're done.

-LB