Posted on 05/23/2019 3:00:27 PM PDT by RightGeek
Employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are quitting at a rapid clip as Secretary Sonny Perdue prepares to move forward with plans to relocate two offices far outside the Washington, D.C., Beltway.
Federal employees at the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) – two small but important agencies within the USDA – are unhappy with Perdue’s plan, announced last August, to move the majority of their staff from current offices in the capital to an area closer the country’s agricultural centers.
“This move does not serve a public purpose,” Peter Winch, a representative for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents ERS workers, told Fox News. “Employees don’t want to move, and it doesn’t make sense for them to move.”
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Winch added that since ERS employees joined AFGE earlier this month, six employees have already quit their jobs with the government agency in response to the planned move. He said overall staffing is down to 209 from 300 during the Obama administration.
A Washington Post report cited an estimate that the ERS used to see roughly one “non-retirement” departure per month – but that pace has doubled since October. NIFA reportedly has also seen people leave.
...
Perdue and his staff have narrowed the list of places where the two agencies could go down to three from an original 130 -- with Kansas City, the state of Indiana and North Carolina’s research triangle in the Raleigh-Durham area on the shortlist. St. Louis, Mo., and Madison, Wis., are two alternate locations.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Winning!!
I’m devastated.
Naaaaaa.
Move EVERY government office out of DC! I think North Dakota would be a good spot for most of them.
The special interests have the money to relocate.
Winning!
Put those centers in remote farm land in between farms and ranches.
I call it keepin the bullshit outta the beef
Point Barrow Alaska.
What do you have against North Dakota?
Bye Bye! Make sure the door don’t hit ya where the Good Lord done split ya!
If enough of these jag-offs leave the DC area, we might even turn Virginia red again.
Great idea, let them go and leave their positions permanently vacant.
Good! We need to break up the DC clique.
Don’t lawmakers complain about the high cost of living in DC? Didn’t AOC complain about high cost of living?
If such is the case, then you would think that federal employees with lower salary would be happy to move out of DC.
Corrections, insights welcome.
I’ve been thinking this was a proper move for years. Get a lot of the departments out of DC. It made sense in the horse and buggy days but instant internet communications make a move to the heartland a money saver and also gives the bureaucracy some touch with the rest of the country outside the DC bubble.
Just shows they’re not dedicated to their jobs. All they really care about is their home in the Swamp.
Yup. Dept of Agriculture should be in an agricultural state...not a deep state city.
I wouldn’t be in a terrible hurry to rehire. Move the offices to rented space in maybe Kansas or Nebraska and hire locals. And no lobbyists get through the door who can’t at least drive a tractor.
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