E&E:
U.S. EPA employees’ fitness benefits are now on the Trump administration’s budget chopping block.
On Thursday, EPA union leaders received an email from an agency labor attorney saying the agency planned to stop funding for fitness subsidies and fitness centers by the end of next month.
“This serves as official notice that the agency will discontinue fitness subsidies and fitness center funding agency-wide, which will result in a savings of nearly $ 900K per year for the agency. Discontinuation of this funding is targeted for July 31, 2017,” said the attorney in the email, which was obtained by E&E News.
Union officials expressed anger at the EPA notice. more here
If fitness is so important to them, they will buy their own gym memberships. It’s ridiculous to claim that if the memberships aren’t free, they can’t/won’t go work out.
Government bureaucrats are The Real One Percent* that receive salaries, perks, pensions and job security that us taxpayers could only dream of having, but that taxpayer foots the bill. They better stop whining about trivial things like losing their gym privileges.
* There are about 300 million people in the United States and about 3 million federal government workers – one percent.
Awwwww.
Some days — when all the words have been written and said — it all comes down to that picture of that “guy” lifting those two pound weights. It looks like he’s working on his thigh gap. Ewww. I so want to forget those years.
@Mr. Anth Ropy – the 3 million fed employees you cite is bad enough, but that doesn’t even put a dent into the number of people contracted to the feds but officially employed by someone else. And if you add in the state and local govt. employees to the actual federal employees, that number becomes almost 22 million (not counting the contract employees).
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/21955000-12329000-government-employees-outnumber-manufacturing
The state and local govt. employees make far more than private sector people in many if not most cases and they have ridiculous pension plans.
A woman that used to baby sit for me about 50 years ago became an elementary school principle in GA and was employed with the state for 30 years. Her annual salary as principle was about $115k – now she collects about 90% of that as her pension. She has never been very bright or responsible and that never changed, yet she makes 6 figures being retired, courtesy of GA taxpayers. One of the multitude of reasons that I have come to despise most of government over my lifetime.
Kennedy allowed unions Trump should end them.
I know a lot of companies have their own gym. From past experience high tech company gets a group discount with gymA and the employees pay the tax on membership every month out of their pay checks. If employee doesn’t like gymA they can use their medical savings account to get a membership elsewhere. At least people pay something and are aware of the costs.
I used to work inside a NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) facility as a maintenance support person. I observed that the “gym” was rarely used. Desks were rarely occupied. It occurred to me that me that the whole thing was a shadow operation. An arm of the government with the sole purpose of absorbing taxpayer dollars and growing. I am now sure that that is a true assessment.
This one’s better heard than read…
Gym privileges have been suspended because Jim quit.
The times for unions as we have known them has passed. Exercising on the taxpayer dime as some incentive to show up to work is a sad testament to our work ethic today. A full day’s work for a full dayday’s wages. No more, no less.
Pic of Obozo working on his bowing muscles.
It’s not so much that the gym is free or low-cost as it is that the employees can work out WHILE ON THE CLOCK!
Pay me to work out and I will.
My HOA has a small gym in the club house that I can use at anytime 24/7, at no additional cost (notice the phrasing, I am paying for it through the HOA dues). I am right next door to the place – don’t use it.
But if I had a gym at work, oh hell yeah I’d use it. Work out while getting paid, shirking responsibility (like reading blogs), not getting any actual work done while being paid, sign me Skippy!
I don’t know what the actual numbers are, but typically a gym has several members who rarely or never show up for each member who does use the facilities. At my gym, January and the first part of February are crowded (New Year’s resolutions), but by April is just the regulars again. That’s why dues seem so reasonable.
If the EPA wants to subsidize their gyms, and given that many government employees love them some socialism, I would propose that we keep these gym subsidies and force all employees to work out an hour per day off the clock. They can show up an hour before before work, and engage in some sweatin’. And for lunch, they can chow down on those healthy Michelle Obama meals the school kids don’t want to eat for some reason.
The union poobahs insist that healthy employees are productive employees, and I say then let’s force them to be healthy if they want to spend the taxpayer’s dime.