I've always heard how cushy government jobs and how good government benefits are, but they always left out this little bit. Federal and State jobs are exempt from OSHA regulations.
I don't get breaks. I have 30 minutes of unpaid lunch and the rest of the time I'm working. I haven't worked with a smoker in 8 years because there's no smoke breaks.
Heat / AC are not required. All I have is fans in the summer and a little space heater in the winter. Both are miserable. A different building has built-in solar heat walls that makes summers miserable >85°F. Admin went in there once and said “never again”. There's a guy here doing manual labor type work and the air vents in his truck don't work. No Heat driving around in the winter, no AC in the summer.
They talk about safety a lot. The safety committee is a joke with no real power. They say we're impowered to stop doing whatever when we feel unsafe. That's really hard to exercise. We have daily operations that need to get done and everyone gets mad if you hold them up or aren't pulling your weight. And a poor performance review will affect your bonus.
We can't strike or have a union. We simply don't have the right to concerted action and are legally prohibited from striking. We can try to push change from within but there's so much red tape and infighting everywhere that nothing will ever change. We can advocate for change but in a big government agency it won't go anywhere.
Not OSHA but more venting:
It used to be good pay but now it's pretty meh. Do you know why they don't want to raise the federal minimum wage? Because the federal pay scales are calculated based on that federal minimum and EVERY government wage would increase. People are pushing for a federal minimum at $15/hr. Most base level jobs for the government barely make more than that. It's not worth the headache. The work for these jobs is much more than a minimum wage job, and you probably have to go through the headache of seasonal work before you're a full-time employee.
Chronically under staffed. The red tape for hiring means this process takes over 4 months. When people leave or burn out the burden just gets added to your job. The place I work now has apologized 4 years in a row for being so short staffed and “everything will get better when we have more people” I no longer believe in those sentiments of false hope. It's just an excuse to not make changes. Instead of listening to the 3-4 people complaining about doing the work of 6 people, and listening that we cannot go on like this, they just make excuses and say it's been fine so far. We are drowning.
Toxic. Guess who stays in the system long enough to move up? That's right toxic people. The ones that want that power bad enough to stay in. Leadership is a toxic infighting power struggle between divisions. No wonder nothing ever gets done and nothing ever gets better.
Government work is one giant shit-show.