Originally Posted by
hampstor
Yeah that's basically where i'm at on this topic too. It's become an "us vs them" zero sum discussion.
Ministries operate just like departments in a corporation. If a department get less operating budget than what they asked for, they reprioritize and makes changes to business plans. Sometimes this means cutting operating costs like training, events, laptop refreshes, reducing maintenance schedules (running things to failure and replacing vs. proactive maintenance), reduces salaries, bonuses, reducing contractors, or reducing FTEs.
If any department just goes to cutting FTEs without doing anything else, you should be questioning why they are doing that, not blindly holding it up as an example of the evil conservative trump supporters who are lining the pockets of big business at the expense of the people. It blows my mind that people will hide behind "You don't care about health, you're just supporting big corporations, you don't care about students" as a strawman against very basic business and budgeting practices.
Cutting 300 FTE's and not getting called out on it is hilarious. No reduction in training budget, no reduction in non union staff wages, no reduction in maintenance plans, no deferred technology plans, no reductions in contractors, no analysis of in source vs. outsourced work, no capital plan on how to reduce operating costs, and on and on.
To be clear, all the jobs are not going to be saved by cutting back on office supplies budget, but if you don't even look at your office supplies budget, then you're going to have very limited credibility with decision makers when you say "I don't have enough money to run my business".
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