Why is it so freaking hard to fire government employees?

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I'm truly baffled by the level of incompetence tolerated by the government at EVERY level. We have air traffic controllers now who are literally sleeping on the job, risking lives by doing so. Just today there was another story about one watching a movie while he should have been doing his job. Have any of these morons been fired? Nope! They are on suspension pending an investigation. The feds won't tell us though if it's a PAID suspension which it probably is. These guys aren't underpaid or unappreciated as their unions may claim either. They are making about $180,000 a year. We all know how hard it is to fire a tenured teacher. In Oregon a teacher organized a group to go to tea parties and carry racist signs to make the tea parties appear racist. He also advised his minions to data mine social security numbers and other personal information from people at Tea Parties. Teachers lately have been using their classrooms as political soapboxes making children sing songs worshipping the president. Nobody's losing their job over it though. In Alaska Sarah Palin was a villain for firing a public safety commissioner who allowed a trooper to stay on the job after tasering a child, drinking alcohol in his squad car, and various other illegal activities showing that to some on the left, it's a crime to fire incompetent government employees. I'm a librarian and I must say when I was in Miami I worked with the most useless employee I've ever seen in my life. This piece of garbage would routinely come in 2-4 hours late. He would call, say he'd be late, and not show up at all. Sometimes he'd leave for lunch and not come back. Once he disappeared and was found asleep in his car after being gone for almost 2 hours while on the clock. During the grand opening of the branch he was drunk and even attempted to hit on the associate director of the library system. Every time he was written up for anything all he got was a "verbal counseling" or "written counseling". He never even got suspended. He did get demoted a few times, but kept his original pay rate so he was really just being paid the same rate for less work and less responsibility. He also challenged every disciplinary action through the union. So I'm trying to understand, why won't local, state, and the federal governments fire these people? Why are they allowed to continue their employment? In private businesses I've seen people fired on the spot for sleeping on the job, mouthing off to customers, being late too often, calling in sick too often, or just walking out before their shift was over.