Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers

ideonexus writes "Last month an article appeared on Slashdot about how the government pays IT contractors twice what it pays its own workers. Missing from the article was how much the IT contractor pays its own workers. After working for a federal contractor for 10 years, a document accidentally leaked to employees by the contractor illustrated the incredible disparity between what the contractor was paying us and what they were charging the government. Like most contracts according to the GAO, the government provided our offices, utilities, computers, and training, leaving our salaries as the only overhead to the IT contractor, giving them an incredible incentive to keep them as low as possible to maximize profits. When the top 100 defense contractors cost taxpayers $306 billion, eliminating the federal contractor middle-man seems like an obvious place to start the austerity measures."

Comments

Re:Um....

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Actually, not really. While there is plenty of bullshit, the government requires a certain portion of the work to go to small businesses. So there is a good chance that a small business will get the work.

However, the small businesses that do get the work, tend to be partnered with larger firms, who end up doing all the paperwork to help the small business win the contract. I know, I work for one of those monstrous companies and we partner with, and supply the paper framework all the time.

Re:Summary is moronic

[garyebickford]

You just reminded me of a guy I met on a plane a long time ago. He was a welder for a company that did nuke maintenance in Washington state on the nuclear subs as part of their periodic refit (the subs, as most military ships, have to be torn down quite a ways every so many years and have everything fixed and updated, including the nuclear power plants). He had to have some kind of high security clearance, and was a very high end welder so his pay rate was pretty high; then working on nuclear equipment involved a substantial pay differential. Safety rules and work rules meant that his work day was as follows: 1.5 hours going through several levels of decontamination and clothing changes; 1 hour of actual welding; 1.5 hours coming back out of the decon cycle, 1 hour lunch, 1.5 hours of decon to go back in, 1 hour of work, 1.5 hours of decon. The contractor was required to have the lunch break by state and federal law, and there is no way to eat lunch inside a nuclear hazmat suit. And federal work rules did not allow working more than eight hours. So he spent six hours per day changing clothes and two hours per day working, getting paid for eight, at (IIRC) triple time for nuke+hazard duty. I don't know that there's any other way to do this, but it's expensive. If they went to a 12 hour day then they could get four more hours of actual work, tripling actual work hours per day, but that was impossible. It was kind of frustrating all round for the contractor, the employee (the guy I talked to) and the military folks but nothing could be done. It's been a long time so I might have some details wrong but that's the gist.

As for your numbered points, some good, some interesting, ideas but never gonna happen.

Re:They're impossible to fire

[daem0n1x]

Well, if unions in the USA are as powerful as The Incredible Hulk, they must be doing a really sloppy job. After all, you're among the countries with the highest income inequality among developed nations. And it keeps rising.

I suspect this anti-union rhetoric that floods Slashdot all the time is more a product of decades of brainwashing from the part of the corporate media propaganda machine.

In my country (Portugal), unions are pretty weak. That's one of the reasons (but not the only, mind you) we have incredibly shitty pay compared to countries where unions are powerful like Germany and France. And it hasn't helped us at all to have weak unions. Our productivity is still very low, although we work more hours than the other Europeans. Our country is bankrupt. And our managing class is one of the most illiterate, lazy, loutish and well-paid in Europe.