Posted on 06/20/2017 6:17:53 PM PDT by mdittmar
The Environmental Protection Agency plans on shedding more than 1,200 employees by early September through buyouts and early retirements, as part of a broader push by the Trump administration to shrink a government entity the president once promised to eliminate “in almost every form.”
The departures would amount to about 8 percent of the current 15,000-person workforce of the EPA, where a hiring freeze also remains in effect. The Trump administration has proposed a 31 percent cut to its budget, the largest percentage reduction of any agency and one that could mean several thousand job losses.
In an email to EPA union leaders this week, an agency attorney said the EPA plans to make buyout offers to as many as 1,228 employees. “As of now,” the message read, “the last effective date for employee separations is September 2, 2017, so any applications would have to be in before that date.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Here's an old song Iike;)
More swamp draining. Keep at it, Mr. President.
The May figures revealed 601,000 more private sector jobs and 7,000 less government sector jobs since January.
Buyouts? WTF. Call it a RIF and just show them the door. Happens all the time in the real world. Buyouts my ass.
Buy out?
“Here’s a subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club and a nice cardboard box for your personal items...now GTF out!!!”
Just RAZE the friggin building..!
The Left is alllllllways droning on about how Nixon never did anything good, right..?
Kay, let’s TAKE THEM AT THEIR WORD..!
Make the remaining employees sit through daily videos of past Trump speeches. They’ll quit in droves.
Keep pushing the Russian narrative while Trump executes his agenda in in the shadow.
Buyouts? Fire them and make them work to pay for the damage they have done with severe muslim-like penalties on their heads if they do not. Take their pensions to pay back damages. Do what the IRS does to conservatives.
Hahaha. Fire 75 % of them. These thug bums have hassled the American Citizens and businesses enough.
Spend $30 million to save more than $200 million over the next 4 years?
Done...
Buyout? I didn’t know there was a contract when you took a government position.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has our own EPA with whom the federales often interfere. Case in point: We have lots of trees in Pennsylvania, lots and lots of trees. That is what sylvania means. They often get too thick and need to be thinned, especially around highways. Anyone with half a brain knows what happens otherwise.
The state EPA chartered several wood mulching operations near various points on the highways. They mulched all the excess trees which were thinned and hauled there. They also mulched scrap wood such as pallets and used an electromagnet to remove all the nails to sell as scrap iron. It created jobs and useful stuff like mulch for public parks and trails. Everybody wins, right?
Not exactly, the Federal EPA stepped in and decided these operations were putting too much tannin into the local water supply. Tannin is a natural result of mixing water with decaying woods and leaves. Even your pristine mountain streams which flow through woodlands have higher concentrations of tannin. It is sort of like drinking tea. But that didn't matter to the federales.
The tests said too much tannin, so most of those mulching operations had to go. Do you know what they do with the scrap trees now? They pile them up in the same places to decompose. The tannin concentration in the water flowing through those former operations is unchanged. But there is no longer any business to shut down.
The businesses who used to send they scrap pallets there now throw them in the dumpster. The people who used to buy mulch there now go without or pay more for it elsewhere. This is what the EPA calls progress and protecting the environment.
LOL, or file for disability for on the job mental anguish.
Union contract.
We need to take environmental issues out of the regulatory environment and back into the courts where they belong. If your activity in some way imposes on my property rights, then I due you to stop the activity.
LOL!
And I reply :-)
Spoken out of true ignorance.
In some cases, a buyout can save the taxpayers a chunk of money. It's almost always cheaper than a RIF.
The buyout is capped at the lesser of $25,000 or what the employee would get in a RIF. Even if the employee gets the same amount as in a RIF, there is a built in savings because he or she goes out the door sooner, so less pay is collected before departure.
Additional savings can be had from avoiding the costs associated with Bump and Retreat.
There is also a clawback provision if the employee shows up somewhere else in the federal government within 5 years of taking the buyout.
On the other hand, RIF pay is one week per year for the first 10 years of service; two weeks per year for each subsequent year, with a 10% bump for each year after age 40 (calculated on a quarterly basis. So a 45 year old with 20 years of service is going to get 30 weeks pay plus an additional 50% (or 45 weeks pay). Someone would have to be doing menial labor and have never gotten a promotion for the RIF to be worth more. (Max RIF pay is a full year's pay). There are re-hire preferences, and there may be greater access to unemployment benefits.
Truthfully, I don’t care how they go just as long as they go. They are just going to throw 25 grand at them (about 16K after taxes) and then give them a lower pension for the rest of their lives. A huge loss of money. If Trump does this in every major department, we will see great savings.
Don’t forget that the federal retirement plan SUCKS. It is basically 1 percent a year so in order to get 50 percent, you have to work 50 years in the federal government. Not many do that so the pensions are pathetic.
How do we know the potential whistle blowers aren’t being put out to pasture.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.