freeze, don't make any quick career moves
When faced with uncertainty, sometimes it is best to do nothing. It is not my typical modus operandi but caution is advised in turbulent times.
Nothing is more turbulent than the initial days of the new Trump Administration. Executive Order after Executive Order has flooded the zone in many different ways. Which ones are legal, which ones will be challenged “eventually” by a rubber stamp Congress or by the flurry of legal challenges being made in courts of law across the country.
See this AXIO story, Trump offering buyouts to all federal workers If you are a federal employee, should you take the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) offer to leave federal service immediately and be paid for another eight months? US Senator Tim Kane thinks you should not, because there is legal authority behind that offer. For more on what is going on over at OPM see this article from WIRED, Elon Musk Lackeys Have Taken Over the Office of Personnel Management I don’t know if it bothers you, but it bothers me that the world’s richest man has been given permission to go deep into all the federal agencies. You could have the attitude that “do whatever is required to root out liberal bias from federal agencies and the means to do that doesn’t matter.” In my opinion, how things are done does matter. Otherwise, we become some form of banana republic with no procedures, laws or regulations.
Remember the message from many is for the Trump Administration to “burn it all down.” When we only have ashes, then what? Let’s pretend that the legal authority to move forward with offering federal employees a path to leave their jobs, get paid for eight months and enjoy the summer off while others are still back at work. I’ve never been with an organization that thought they had enough staff to do what is expected of them. As I’ve written many times before, small staffs have to prioritize what portion of emergency management will be a priority and what will be left undone. It makes that person vulnerable when disasters strike in an area of responsibility that has not been addressed.
Dismissing thousands of federal employees will make many people feel good about the act. They might not feel as good, and maybe that is the point, when the wheels of government and the processing of payments grind to a halt because of a lack of staffing. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) got millions of dollars to hire new staff to answer the phones when taxpayers call—improving services. If you don’t like that, get rid of those employees and go back to inferior service which will feed the frustration of people with government. I guess that might just be the goal.
I can say I’m happy at this point not to be in the Federal workforce. There is this from the Guardian, Federal workers brace for Trump with morale ‘as low as it’s ever been’ One quote from the article is this, “ The former president attacked federal employees on the campaign trail, claiming they were “destroying this country” in an August podcast interview. “They’re crooked people, they’re dishonest people,” he said. “They’re going to be held accountable.” Trump has signaled his support for reviving the Schedule F executive order he issued in the final days of his last administration, under which swaths of the federal workforce could be stripped of their civil servant protections and redefined as political appointees. Advocates of the policy claimed to have identified 50,000 employees that could be fired.”
One person commented on a previous LinkedIn post I had that said, basically, “If during the campaign this is what was promised, why are you so surprised?” No surprises here! Promises made, promises kept. What’s next?
