Federal employees at NIH making $100k to do absolutely nothing
Jaw-dropping accounts from the workers themselves
In watching the developments and controversies over downsizing the federal workforce, I’m reminded of a series of shocking but eyeopening stories I reported at CBS News in 2003.
That was the year I learned there are more than a few federal employees being paid six figure salaries to not work.
Three people I profiled who were getting big money to do nothing—happened to work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The first person was NIH grants manager Edward McSweegan. He had so little to do at work that he became a successful mystery writer on-the-job and joined a nearby gym to “break up the day.”
He told me he wasn’t the only one.
Indeed, after I aired his story, I began connecting with numerous other federal workers who likewise told me they were being paid six figures to do no work!
As it happens, it is so difficult to fire federal employees that when they get on the wrong side of a vindictive supervisor, the supervisor may simply isolate the person and give him nothing meaningful to do.
After reporting the story, the comment I heard the most was, “I’d love to be paid six figures to do nothing!”
But the workers I spoke to were not the kind of people who wanted to do nothing. They were Type A personalities who, like a lot of us, derived some of their personal worth based on how much they could contribute in a meaningful way on the job. Their supervisors understood that removing this worth served as tremendous punishment. I even learned of one case where such a scenario had driven a woman to commit suicide.
Read on for details and to view the two videos where the employees told their own outrageous stories.
The Man With No Work
June 26, 2003 / CBS Sharyl Attkisson
"There's nothing to do. There's nothing to pretend to do," laments Dr. Edward McSweegan.
McSweegan once managed a large portfolio of research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but his work days have been pretty much empty since March 1996.
It's not that he doesn't want to work. He says they won't let him. Meantime, taxpayers are covering his generous paycheck, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.
McSweegan, who earns about $100,000 a year, believes he's being punished for using his personal time to discredit a charity that had influence over his bosses at NIH.
Back in 1995, McSweegan and other scientists felt the charity was putting out unscientific and incorrect information about Lyme Disease, and he used his personal time to discredit the charity.
In 1997, the NIH suspended McSweegan for two weeks, partly because he had referred to the charity as "whacko" on his personal Web site. But documents show that NIH's own lawyers agreed there were no grounds to fire him. The charity later sued McSweegan for slander, but lost. McSweegan won his counter-suit against them.
Before the feud, McSweegan received the highest rating possible in his annual job reviews and was awarded annual cash bonuses for his good job performance. His personnel file is full of commendation letters from his bosses. Even after the feud--including his most recent job review--McSweegan's bosses have continued to give him good job performance scores.
CBS News wanted to talk to McSweegan's bosses, but NIH denied a request. A spokesman did say that allegations that some employees don't have enough work to do are "to be expected" in any giant agency. NIH employs 18,000 people. The spokesman also suggested that the same might be true at CBS. This correspondent pointed out that taxpayers don't pay CBS salaries.
So what does McSweegan do all day?
"I've managed to publish a couple of books, some short story fiction, a little bit of non-fiction writing," he said.
Yes, with all that free time, and with taxpayers footing the bill, he's become a successful mystery writer. And more: "I wound up joining a health club near the office, just to sort of to break up the day," he said
Oddly enough, McSweegan has been getting good job reviews.
"I guess I'm good at doing nothing," he said.
On July 1, NIH issued the following statement: "Dr. McSweegan has always been assigned duties appropriate to his position and pay level. The claim that he is being compensated for doing nothing is completely inaccurate."
CBS News showed McSweegan's interview to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, whose Finance Committee played a role in doubling NIH's budget over the last five years to a whopping $27 billion.
And now Grassley wants action. He has fired off a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson demanding that McSweegan be put back to work.
After making it clear that the CBS News investigation raised questions about NIH's use of taxpayer money, Grassley said: "Dr. McSweegan wants to work - I expect HHS/NIH to find him appropriate work that makes good use of his experience and talents."
His letter included this rebuke: "The fault for this lies in great part with NIH management. I request that NIH take immediate steps to ensure that all NIH employees are fully employed and are helping to achieve the goals of the organization. To come rattling a tin cup asking for more money when the NIH is paying for full-time novelists has got to stop."
Some might call Edward McSweegan lucky. But McSweegan said he just wants to expose the kind of waste that gives federal bureaucracy a bad name. Even if -- after all these years of doing nothing -- he gets fired for telling about it.
Talking about this in public is sort of like playing Russian roulette, McSweegan said. "You pull the trigger and see what happens."
He might title his own incredible story "Under Worked and Overpaid." For now, he's waiting for someone else to write the last chapter.
Women With No Work
September 15, 2003 / CBS / Sharyl Attkisson
When Congress was looking to make the National Institutes of Health more efficient, Joyce Sweasy came to the rescue. A top supply manager at NIH, she offered an idea to cut waste and save taxpayers $2 million a year. It's one reason her boss then re-assigned her, but as CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports, it was no promotion.
"I was given absolutely no work to do," Sweasy says.
She claims her boss was angry because her cost-savings plan exposed waste in his branch; he says she was repeatedly insubordinate. But Sweasy never imagined her "punishment" would be a do-nothing assignment with taxpayers forking out her paycheck.
"My gross salary was over a $100,000 a year," she says. "How can they continue to pay me," she wondered. "I'm not doing anything."
Rosemary Cummings was also a high level manager at NIH.
"I was going into work at 7 o'clock in the morning and staying until 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock. Weekends I'd be there," says Cummings.
That all came to a sudden halt when she, too, was transferred from her position, in which she was in charge of 130 people.
In her new position she was doing nothing, Cummings says, but still earning plenty: more than $100,000 a year on the taxpayers' dime.
Joyce Sweasy became depressed and desperate. She even offered to do the clerks' photocopying.
She took her case to an employment judge who said her boss was justified in transferring her but not to a do-nothing job with "less than three hours of work over two years." The judge called that illegal retaliation, and blamed her boss, the same man who gave Cummings nothing to do: a top NIH official, Leamon Lee.
The judge found Lee "has a history of taking reprisal action" against workers, but his career hasn't seemed to suffer.
Raynard Kington, NIH's number two official, won't talk about Lee, but insists managers like Lee are punished when they do wrong. As to how many employees complain they're in "do-nothing jobs," he says there's no epidemic.
"We know that there are allegations like this that get resolved," says Kington. "The important thing is it's resolved."
Sweasy won a $200,000 judgement against NIH for suffering the do-nothing job, but says the lost year decimated her career.
As for Cummings, she left her highly-paid position to begin a much busier early retirement.
As a taxpayer, Cummings says, "My thought is, what a waste."
It's a waste of time, talent and taxpayer dollars.
I’ve shared this. Good work from 2003 is still good work in 2025!
Tip of the proverbial iceberg. Wasting money is the one thing government does proficiently.