“When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
— East African proverb
Joe Davidson
Joe Davidson writes the Federal Diary, a column about the federal workplace that celebrated its 80th birthday in November 2012. Davidson previously was an assistant city editor at The Washington Post and a Washington and foreign correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered federal agencies and political campaigns.
More from Federal Diary:
AP, IRS scandals hurt all feds
FEDERAL DIARY | Even before the current troubles involving the IRS’s targeting of conservative political groups and the Justice Department’s secret seizure of AP telephone records, trust in the federal government was low. Current scandals will smear federal employees, but provide lessons for other agencies.
AP case highlights whistleblower policies
FEDERAL DIARY | DOJ secret review of phone records gives federal employee advocates one more reason to doubt the Obama administration's full commitment to protecting whistleblowers, particularly those in national security agencies.
IRS is quiet on accountability in scandal
The IRS’s targeting of certain groups might be a “deadly sin”; agency, union are quiet on whether anyone was disciplined.
As the White House and Congress, Republicans and Democrats, trade blows over who is at fault for the looming across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester, it is federal workers who will get hit.
With Congress appearing incapable of avoiding $85 billion in automatic cuts by the March 1 deadline, agencies are preparing to force unpaid furlough days on workers that could cost them up to a fifth of their pay.
Those workers must be asking themselves what would happen if they missed such an important deadline, for the second time in as many months. They know what would happen, but the staff can’t punish Congress, no matter how much that might be warranted.
In a notice to employees Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he is “deeply concerned about the potential direct impact of sequestration on you and your families,” before warning them that should “sequestration occur and continue for a substantial period, DoD will be forced to place the vast majority of its civilian workforce on administrative furlough.”
About 800,000 Defense Department civilians could face 22 unpaid leave days, spread out over as many weeks, amounting to a 20 percent pay cut over that period.
Because work requirements will not fall, Panetta said in a letter to the Senate, “the workload on each employee . . . will be increased beyond what can reasonably be achieved.”
Although Panetta had previously announced the number of furloughs, the department’s latest notice made J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, hot.
“These employees aren’t some fat cat bureaucrats in a plush Washington office,” he said. “They are the firefighters who safeguard our bases, the health-care professionals who treat injured soldiers in military hospitals, the mechanics who repair our tanks and planes, the logistics personnel who ensure supplies make it to our troops, the acquisition experts who prevent big defense contractors from ripping off taxpayers.”
He urged “Congress to find a solution to this manufactured crisis that does not punish our hard-working federal employees, cripple our economic recovery or gut federal programs and services.”
In letters to Capitol Hill and labor organizations and in congressional testimony, other agencies also have informed lawmakers of the impact sequestration would have on employees, as well as services:
Agriculture: Plans to furlough about one-third of its workforce, which would lead to “a nationwide shutdown of meat and poultry plants during a furlough of inspection personnel.”
Commerce: “Up to 2,600 NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) employees would have to be furloughed, approximately 2,700 positions would not be filled, and the number of contractors would have to be reduced by about 1,400.” Census vacancies would remain vacant.
Justice: “The Department estimates that it would lose the equivalent of more than 1,000 federal agents . . . as well as 1,300 correctional officers.”
Loading...
Comments