Employee Benefits in the Private and Public Sector

Employee Benefits in the Private and Public Sector
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While the benefits employees have in organizations are important when it comes to compensation, the benefits differ in both the private and the public sectors. The differing needs of the employers and employees in these two sectors have an effect on the characteristics of the benefits received. This essay compares the incidents in which these benefits are administered and the aspects of these benefits in both the private firms and firms owned by the state or government. Data obtained from the labor statistics employee benefits survey that takes place annually shows that:
* Nearly all employees working full-time in the private sector are granted paid vacations. This can be compared with three-quarter of the employees from the public sector. Public employee teachers are the least likely to be given this benefit, while the police and firefighters are more likely to get it. Most private firms grant many purposes of leave; for example, vacation leave is separate from a personal break, while the public sector provides a multipurpose leave that is granted annually.
* State and government workers have a defined pension plan financed by both the employer and the employee, and the benefits are more generous than those of the private sector. The pension plans from the private sector are financed by the employer only. However, the private sector pension plans are also accompanied by social security benefits which are not applicable to the three-quarter from the public sector since they do not have jurisdiction in the social security system.
* Public sector employees have more significant participation in health maintenance organizations than private-sector employees. This is because the public sector employees are more concentrated in the metropolitan areas where these health maintenance organizations are more prominent, thus having a more significant participation in these health plans.
The survey that gives us these data started in 1979 and only looked at the benefits of the private sector, and it was only until 1987 that it started looking at the help of the public sector. The survey gives information on the characteristics and the incidents under which these benefits are applicable. Some of these benefits include paid leave, pension plans, health insurance, contribution plans, flexible work plans, and arrangement of benefits.
     In the private sector survey conducted between 1979 and 1986, the coverage included the mining, manufacturing, transportation, communication, construction, and other service fields. For the study to happen, 250 employees in the construction and mining firms were the minimum participation number while 50 from the accounting industry. The survey had 21 million workers participating. Employees are mainly divided into three groups: technical, production, and administrative, to differentiate the benefit plans' design and availability. Production is referred to as a blue-collar job, while technical and administrative are referred to as white-collar (Statistics, 1990).
     The public sector survey carried out from the year 1987 was classified under administrative, district schools, health, and other districts such as the water and sewer district. The minimum participation of the employees was 50. The whole state was considered under survey, and it saw the participation of a total of 10.3 million public sector employees, which is approximately three-fourths of the total government workforce (Statistics, 1990).
     When the public and private benefit plans are being compared, it is essential to consider the group benefits, whether a particular benefit received by workers is dependent on other items they are also receiving. For instance, the sickness insurance is only given to 14% of the employees from the public sector because all the workers are covered by a paid sick leave which reduces the need for sickness insurance.
 Health insurance has no significant difference based on the sector. 95% of the private sector employees and 94%of the public sector had this health cover in 1987. Life insurance had 96% coverage by those in the private sector, while the public sector had 91% of the firefighters and the police and 80% of the regular workers taking the cover. Those who participate in the public pension plans are given vast amounts of death benefits which explains why most have not taken the life insurance cover (Frumkin, 1986).
Short disability cover has almost the same number of participants, with 94% from the private sector and 97% from the state and government sector. Still, as earlier mentioned, the provision of these benefits differs. Long-term disability cover is standard with most white-collar jobs from the private sector. In contrast, the blue-collar private sector employees and the public sector have pension plans covering th...