Give The Washington Post credit for its expose that criticizes a large portion of its declining subscriber base: Federal employees.
According to the Post, “Tens of thousands of federal workers are being kept on paid leave for at least a month — and often for longer stretches that can reach a year or more . . . During a three-year period that ended last fall, more than 57,000 employees were sent home for a month or longer. The tab for these workers exceeded $775 million in salary alone.”
Frankly, I’m not sure how this situation differs from the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s award-winning telework program, except that on paid leave bureaucrats dispense with even the pretense of “work.”
As covered here, in the USPTO program “teleworkers” surfed the Internet, boosted HuffPo page views, investigated online pornography, qualified for free shipping at Amazon, and filled out fraudulent time sheets. The advantage of being on paid leave is bureaucrats get to skip the time sheets.
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Michael R. Shannon (The Whole Shebang (mostly)) is a Virginia-based public relations and media consultant with MANDATE: Message, Media & Public Relations who has worked in over 75 elections on three continents and a handful of islands.
