want to work in the government?

A lot of people I’ve come across congratulate me when they learn that I now work in the government. I did not receive the same amount of warmth and enthusiasm from them when I was working at ABS-CBN, a well-known company, but in the private sector.

Since childhood, I’ve been told by “adults” that a permanent government job is the best employment that one could score. As a working adult myself, I see now the people who perpetuate that narrative: they are the misguided “adults” of the yesteryears; the masters-degree holders who, interestingly, cannot write a simple English sentence; and the freeloading, aging scums whose sole reason of working is to add a few more years into their retirement benefits.

When they say that a government job is the best job, it’s because it’s a haven for parasites like them. The government protects incompetence. The security of tenure that is cherished by civil service laws is a hotbed for slackers who passively earn their paycheck twice a month until they reach the ripe age of retirement, where they then live off of their hard-earned, government-funded pension.

While I have my biases against my present work because of most of the people I have to endure, I’ve listed below, as honestly as I could, some of the things you can expect when you enter the service, and hopefully guide you on whether to take your chances.

Security of tenure: A double-edged sword

Security of tenure is debatably the best thing that a regular government position offers. Unless a group of people were to commit treason and successfully overthrow the government, no economic crisis, pandemic, or force majeure can close down most government offices. Private companies are, on the other hand, susceptible to closure, as seen with the bankruptcy and layoffs during the height of the pandemic. If you work in the government, you’re guaranteed to have and keep your job not only because you’re protected by civil service laws, but also because the government is more or less permanent.

However, tenure can also work against you. Working in the government means you are authorizing social service institutions, like the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), to deduct 9% of your monthly salary. That doesn’t seem too bad at first, but the insurance policy requires that you render at least 15 years of continuous service if you want to truly benefit or withdraw the deductions you were given no option to refuse. If you render a minimum of three years, you may be entitled to separation benefit, but that will only be available to you after you reach the age of 60, and, depending on how old you are now, 60 can be decades away.

To illustrate, Juan, a regular government worker who has a fixed monthly salary of ₱20,000, is guaranteed to be deducted ₱1,800 every time. In one year, that is equivalent to ₱21,600 of deductions. If he resigns after a year, he gets no separation pay whatsoever. That means he charitably gave away ₱21.6k to the government. The same would be the case if he were to resign after two years, but in this case, he would be giving away ₱43,200.

If he worked for at least 36 months (and paid the premiums of ₱64,800, which he had no choice anyway), he may be entitled to a separation benefit of ₱60,000, which he can only withdraw when he reaches the age of 60, not even right away, which sort of defeats the purpose of a separation pay.

If he wants to receive the much-coveted pension that people are so eager about, he needs to render 15 whole years in the service. And if he resigns before 60, he still has to wait for the retirement age before he can reap any of the benefits.

If your intention for working in the government is solely for the retirement benefits, you will be sorely disappointed, because, as explained above, it will take a lot of years before that will happen. And if you are not even sure nor passionate about a career in the government, you are guaranteed a stagnant, 15-year commitment, bereft of meaning and direction. My word of advice: don’t. If you can make that much amount of money working in the private sector, go buy an insurance plan that is not dependent on your job and that is on your terms. 

Cash benefits

A regular government worker is entitled to several handsome cash benefits throughout the year. Among these are:

Personnel Economic Relief Allowance (PERA) – ₱2,000, received monthly

Uniform allowance – ₱6,000, received once a year, usually by April

Mid-year bonus – Equivalent of one month basic salary, received once a year, usually by May

Year-end bonus – Equivalent of one month basic salary, received once a year, usually by November

Cash gift – ₱5,000, received once a year, usually by November

Collective negotiating agreement (CNA) – Depends on the agency’s savings for the year, received once a year, usually by December

If we maintain our example Juan from above, all these cash benefits (excluding CNA, because its amount cannot be determined) translate to a staggered ₱75,000 of “extra income” for him for the year. This amount does not include other cash incentives that may be given to them anytime by order of the President.

However, be reminded that these are not a one-time, big-time cash gift. Even with the extra cash, there are lean months where you receive only your salary (plus the PERA), and getting by can still be tough. 

The last two months of the year are when government workers receive the most amount of cash (year-end bonus, cash gift, and the CNA), so this is about the time you see malls, groceries, and salons bursting with consumerists throwing away all their money for gratification.

As a side note, being able to buy things with your money is understandably exciting, but I don’t think it’s wise to spend every year-end buying so much meaningless clutter. I’ve seen breadwinners spend this time of the year stocking up on groceries, and that’s okay. But how about those who buy non-necessities like new smartphones, luxury bags, and so on? I often hear people justify their binge because it’s Christmas or New Year, which doesn’t make sense if they’ve been struggling with money for the past 10 months. It’s their money; but in my opinion, I think it’s wasteful. My take on this should be for another blog post, probably.

Paid leaves, holidays, work suspensions

Regular government workers are entitled yearly to 15 days of paid vacation leave and 15 days of paid sick leave, which are both cumulative and commutative. In addition, they are also entitled to special privilege leaves, maternity leave, paternity leave, and even study leave, to name a few. Those who have at least 15 days of accumulated vacation leave are also entitled to five days of forced leave, which are non-cumulative and consumable only within the year.

One of the advantages that I genuinely enjoy as a government worker is the holidays. That sentence sounds like an oxymoron because I don’t actually work during holidays. But that just goes to show how passionate I am about my work, huh? Going back, holidays are one of the few days that you can legally score an extra day off, which is also paid, by the way. In the private sector, holidays can mean extra remuneration, but we have to admit that not all private companies are compliant with the Labor Code.

Regular holidays are announced by the Malacañang usually by November or December of the preceding year, so you can see ahead of time the months when you can enjoy a long weekend or two of JOMO – joy of missing out – at home.

Government employees are also paid even if the President (or local chief executives, like governors or mayors) orders the suspension of work due to calamities, local observances, or other similar occurrences. I would be lying if I said that I don’t feel a little relieved whenever work is suspended. I have one less working day to endure for the week, but decades more to live through.

Overtime is not paid

You read that right. Overtime is not paid. Your power-tripping, bitter boss can compel you to go work on a weekend or a holiday, and you will not be paid for it. It is not illegal. Nothing in the civil service laws (or as far as I know) allow monetary compensation for overtime service rendered by government workers.

Juan’s job is not always the dreamy “8 AM to 5 PM, rinse and repeat until 60 forda pension” that people imagine when they think of a “government job”. It is, of course, the case for our brain-dead office ornaments, who go to work to watch Tiktok clips for 8 hours, using the free WiFi of airconditioned offices, whose bills are willingly and knowingly paid for by law-abiding taxpayers. It’s not the same for Juan, who, as an idealistic millennial, has dreams for himself.

Agencies like the DOH, DSWD, DA, and DOLE, to name a few, are notorious for overtime work, mostly because their mandates are along the frontlines and emergency response. 

It can be draining to work outside of the normal working hours or days, especially when you just know that you could be spending your precious time doing other, non-work-related things. This torture is more painful if what you are being asked to do is not aligned with what you want from a career or your life.

This is something I personally struggle with in my present employment. In addition to the fact that overtime is not incentivized, the things we are forced to do overtime are almost always the things that we could have accomplished within office hours if it were not for the incompetence, inefficiency, and poor implementation of programs. 

On one particular occasion, I had to work several days overtime out in the field. I was conducting surveys, similar to a house-to-house census of the PSA, for multiple households in far-flung barangays, to determine who among residents can qualify as beneficiaries for a social service project. Months later, a belated order came to us which effectively nullified the criteria for selecting beneficiaries. In the end, what they did was handpick the beneficiaries – which put to waste all those days of overtime and data gathering. It was a plain, infuriating bobo move which is the norm in government offices.

Bureaucratic bullshit and corruption

Meetings and seminars abound in the government. You would have probably come across some government offices being accused of holding junkets because they conduct meetings in tourist hotspots like Boracay or Palawan when they could have easily done the same in a less flashy destination. Despite these controversies, government offices continue to do this, much more so now that the pandemic is officially over.

If you are fine with traveling for hours to attend a pointless meeting that could have been explained in an e-mail, then you would be pleased to know that the government is more than willing to sponsor your plane ticket. It has been doing this since time.

The worst meetings though, are those held in the home office. Imagine the most boring class you’ve ever attended in school, and imagine having to sit through that all over again as an adult for at least two days a week, every week, every year, sometimes even during holidays or weekends. It is absolute torture. And it gets more and more absurd when you realize that the purpose of your bosses calling for meetings is just to grandstand and power-trip.

If you put together in one place the sort of people who get off of doing these sorts of things, then corruption seems to naturally follow. Corruption is so deeply rooted in the government that it appears as if the only way to really get rid of it is to replace the entire system with a new one. I would expound on the corrupt practices I witness firsthand, but this is not the proper forum. I think I’ve hinted at it already in my previous posts here and elsewhere. Suffice it to say that no government office is free from corruption of any sort (except maybe, the Office of the Vice President of the previous administration), and if don’t you think you can handle the moral torture of experiencing this firsthand, make an about-face and walk away, fast. 

Want to work in the government?

Writing about this now makes me rethink the priorities in my life. 

There are some good and bad bits of working in the government, but I am more inclined to be impacted by the negative effects than the positive ones. The only reason I worked here voluntarily was that I got retrenched from my last job in the private sector, and I wish I knew beforehand what horrors in the civil service awaited me. I know for a fact that working in the government is not the best job that one could get, contrary to the mindset of most people. If you’re reading this, don’t be duped by what the “adults” tell you.

But it’s a job, it pays so I can live on the bare minimum, and I’m keeping it until I can catch the next bus.