158-5-715
At the same time, benefits are generous in the public sector. Governments tend to give their workers light workloads and generous pensions in lieu of higher wages (which have to come out of the current budget). In America teachers teach for a mere 180 days a year. In Brazil they have the right to take 40 days off a year—out of 200 working days—without giving an explanation or losing a centavo of pay. The defined-benefits revolution that has swept through the private sector has hardly touched the public one: 90% of American state- and local-government workers have defined-benefit plans, compared with 20% of private-sector workers.
Generous pensions have produced an epidemic of early retirement. In Brazil civil servants can retire on full pay after 35 years on the job (30 for women) and teachers can retire after 30 years (25 for women). The result is that Brazil spends as high a proportion of its GDP on pensions (12%) as Britain does, even though the population is much younger. In Poland soldiers and policemen can retire after just 15 years, so it is possible to come across 33-year-old retirees. Add to this the fact that any public-sector worker can hide behind union power to game the system󈠢% of senior California Highway Patrol officers discover a disabling injury about a year before they retire—and you have a dysfunctional mess.
Unions have also made it almost impossible to sack incompetent workers. In Greece there is a law against sacking government workers solely on grounds of poor performance. In other countries there might as well be. Mary Jo McGrath, a Californian lawyer, says that “getting rid of a problem teacher can make the O.J. [Simpson] trial look like a cakewalk.” In 2000-10 the Los Angeles school district spent $3.5m trying to get rid of seven of its 33,000 teachers, and succeeded with only five. The problem extends across the country (see article).

A. 어휘
benefits 혜택. light workloads 가벼운 업무량.
pensions 연금. in lieu of ...의 대신으로.
current budget 經常豫算(경상예산). centavo 멕시코, 쿠바 등의 화폐단위.
defined-benefits 퇴직연금제도. epidemic 유행병.
proportion 비율. retiree 퇴직자. disabling injury 장애부상.
dysfunctional 기능장애의. mess 혼란.
O.J. [Simpson] 아내를 살해한 혐의로 재판을 받은 미식축구선수.
cakewalk 식은 죽 먹기, 누워서 떡 먹기.