Posted on 08/17/2017 5:02:18 AM PDT by Hojczyk
They’re going to have to start laying some people off, and for much of Washington, DC, that’s a completely foreign concept.
Agencies are “pretty certain” they will need to institute reductions in force as they aim to satisfy an executive order from President Trump and ensuing guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, said Leslie Pollack, deputy associate director of OPM’s HR Strategy and Evaluation Solutions, on WJLA’s “Government Matters” program. Those documents required executive branch agencies to reorganize themselves and, in the process, cut the size of their workforces. Pollack’s office, which provides human resources consulting to federal agencies, has assisted officials across government looking at “closing down or realigning functions.”
The remarkable thing about the article linked above is the seeming shock which the managers are experiencing. Lay somebody off? What does that even mean? We don’t lay people off. They come here and stay until they retire or die. That’s how it works.
Apparently not anymore. Welcome the world that rest of us live in.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
GOOD! THIS is how you drain the swamp.
There are HUGE swaths of the federal government that have no Constitutional authority to exist.
A former workout buddy is employed in the largest of Florida’s departments, which handles welfare and Medicaid payments. Governor Bush was going to privatize it and lay people off. What really happened was the department built up a long list of requisitions for open positions, then pruned those unfilled requisitions as “layoffs” or jobs not filled. According to my buddy, most or all of those were fake positions created so that nobody would be laid off. Then, many of the remaining people whose jobs were outsourced were made supervisors of the new outsourced positions. In net, he said nobody was actually laid off. As people retire their supervisory position is not being refilled. So, the government is shrinking, but at nowhere near the rate Bush imagined.
Bush was nowhere near the manager Trump is. So, I doubt anybody will get away with the same tactic under him.
The way to actually cut is to give the department, say, 85% of its previous actual budget and tell them to make do with it. Then, the next year, do the same, until the department is down to what he thinks it should be as set by his measured metrics. It’s astounding how new technology and increases in efficiency can substitute for people if the manager is forced to do it.
Of course, the other thing to do is ask, should government even be doing the function of this department? If not, hand it off to whoever is appropriate and let them rehire any employees they feel they need.
Up until about 0905ET on 9/11, my DoD agency was constantly threatened with RIFs. After that, never, except as a joke.
But going by what happened before, if RIFing people is what gets the bean counters promotion points, they will do it with gusto and glee.
Hahaha. No more watching porn all day at taxpayers’ expense. Cry me a river...
Good, welcome to the real world where money doesn’t just magically get appropriated into a paycheck.
Hell, even keeping the spending flat from year to year would seem draconian to many government employees, and would still help trim the budget somewhat.
I was in the military for six years--mostly in the late 80's, and one thing I hated to hear was that within each department's budget, they had to spend all of their planned budget for that fiscal year. If they didn't, they would receive less the following year. It wasn't about business need (or military need, for that matter), it was about meeting arbitrary spending patterns.
“one thing I hated to hear was that within each department’s budget, they had to spend all of their planned budget for that fiscal year. If they didn’t, they would receive less the following year.”
I spent a career in the military industrial complex. Practically every year I was involved in an effort to help the customer spend down their budget. They bought things they’d never, in a hundred years, use. Because, those were the things we could sell them in the allotted time. I hated it to. On the other hand, it kept me employed and I didn’t hate it enough to change jobs. (Mostly, because the options were all similar and all involved a move I didn’t want to make. We tend to accept things we can’t change and deal with them.)
Balancing the budget by ‘eliminating’ unfilled positions is a favorite ploy of many government entities. Delaware did that last year and patted themselves on the back for making such a ‘sacrifice’. Didn’t cut cash outflow by a dime but it got the budget through, along with the annual tax and fee increases needed to support a Democrat regime.
I work on the DOD side, RIFs are no strangers to us.
You could actually reduce fed employee burden quite a bit by simply reducing their benefits to that of private industry.
When you add up leave, sick day, etc. many gov folks have about 2 mo a year. Limit that to three weeks and you’ve got about a 10% reduction.
Get rid of cadillac insurance, and it drops even more.
Layoffs in the feral gubment are nothing new and should be familiar again.
I grew up in a civil service family more than 50 years ago. Layoffs were a way of life as the feral budget went up and down in the years before the awful baseline budgeting of the Nixon years and projects would start and finish. There were people who were seasonal workers like park rangers and maintenance people whose ranks were made up of farmers, ranchers and school teachers. Even “permanent” people were not exempt from RIF (Reduction in Force) and everyone knew their relative vulnerability. It was very standardly arranged and your staying power was based on a points system. People got furloughed and brought back when things got better. It was always difficult for every one but it was customary and expected.
One extremely good welder was furloughed several times in the yearsI knew him and his manager took it hard each time. The reason he was furloughed so regularly was that most of the people in his group were high point veterans and he was not and the job classification of the work group was subject to periodicity. His wife was a nurse and they weathered through while he worked on his small ranch until recalled. I guess one of the good things was that people were recalled and began again as if they had never left.
You mean departments and agencies that have no basis like:
Education
HHS
DOE
EPA
Any number of commissions?
I have to disagree with paring back in multiple stages. It destroys morale and is unnecessarily playing footsie with what needs to be done. Nobody deserves to be dangled on a string over a tank of hungry sharks for budget cycle after budget cycle.
Yes, I have seen this and yes I am bitter over it since it was so unnecessary and cruel. Just poor management.
“Yes, I have seen this and yes I am bitter over it since it was so unnecessary and cruel. Just poor management.”
That’s a good point. My thinking was that the guy at the top doesn’t really know what the job takes, nor can he trust somebody in the department to tell him. He would therefore institute some metrics to find out. The top guy doesn’t want to create allies for his target which might generate lawsuits and the involvement of the courts. He would therefore be slower about doing what needs to be done. He also has to be elected again at some point downstream and one huge cut would be characterized as “draconian” and he’d be a presented as baby killer and having no interest in whatever the liberal-issue job the department was supposed to do.
The calculation about what the cutting politician can do vs what will be acceptable to his voters is a fine one. It’s also risky, which is why so many politicians won’t make it at all. I applauded Governor Bush’s attempt, but rolled my eyes about how he went about it.
Excepting the Armed Forces, Border patrol, INS and airport security, all other government entities need to cut the workforce by 10% within one year. That will kick start MAGA like you won’t believe!!!
I worked for the NIH when I was young. Gov. workers will not cope well with any degree of uncertainty.
Yeah...and look at the department mission statement
then look at the job descriptions
any that don't align need to be cut.
Like the R&D department hiring service engineers
or...the service department hiring marketing staff.
I’m a retiree receiving a pension check from the Office of Personnel Management and I went out when they offered an Early Out. No extra money involved as a bonus to get you off the rolls but your pension check was based on your high three (average salary of your high three consecutive years) and total years of service including military time. They told people that if you don’t go and the decision to cut your job was made, they could transfer you to a facility up to a hundred miles away. That was your incentive to retire, the loss that they could make your working life very unpleasant. Once they cleared as many older workers off the rolls this way, then in the next Early Out offered a few years later, they offered a $25,000 bonus to retire. It would have been nice to have that, especially for those retirees like me who are ineligible for Social Security because our time was federal. I’m living on a modest pension and look forward to hopefully getting a small COLA for 2018. See my next post.
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