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.”
US FARMERS HURT BY TRADE WAR GETTING $16 BILLION BOOST, US AGRICULTURE SECRETARY SAYS
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 ...
Too bad so sad for those Fed people you name who don’t want to move. Thousands of people in the private sector do it every month. It’s called “life”. I sure don’t feel sorry for the poor Federal employees who might have to leave DC for Bumf**k, ND.
I moved out of DC area and am having a much better life. I remember when the Army moved Human Resources Command from the Hoffman Building in Alexandria to Ft. Knox about 10 years ago. very few people moved and thus the organization lost a lot in institutional knowledge, but I don’t remember any protests like the USDA wimps are doing.
And, how many USDA folks are there per farmer???
How dare you propose the harming the sanity of thousands of defenseless Gooney Birds that live on Midway Island with importing masses of government employees! (semi=sarcasm)
GOOD idea.
What do DC metrosexuals know about farming and ranching?, education?, oil and gas production?, raising kids.....
terrific, now lets move the department of Education to Nome Alaska, and the EPA to a small island atoll in the Pacific.
any other candidates?
There are better, more talented people with a greater breadth of farm knowledge and experience who never applied to those agencies because they didn't want to live in an urban swamp.
Now they might. It will be a very small, very short term loss followed by a very large and long term gain.
I hope all of these parasites quit. Maybe they will finally to do some work.
Good. They do wonderful things like round up and murder Canada geese on federal and city parkland. I have less than zero use for USDA personnel.
Good riddance!!
Don’t let the doors hit ya, govt leeches!!
Some moves are justified, some are not. I know of one in downtown DC that is going to cost the taxpayers millions in unanticipated operating costs, which has already led to a major leaving/retirement (some very well earned) of veteran lawyers, and is giving remaining staff offices that are more like prison cells, unfunctional, located far from the courts (leading to major expenses just for travel), and are inadequate for all the govt agencies there already.
Don’t know about the Agriculture situation, but when it comes to sheer stupidity, incompetence and waste, the GSA is right out out in front
It is probably long enough to land a 737 on. If not there are harbor facilities. Fly the employees to Hawaii. Then put them on a ship from there.
Sidney, Nebraska (6 hours west of Omaha and about 4 hours from Denver)
Since consolidating headquarters at Springfield, Missouri, Bass Pro Shops has a campus of buildings more than 550,000 square feet and worth over $35 million from the former Cabela’s headquarters. Bass Pro Shops will offer them to a qualified company for only $1 a year.
Trump is on to something here - and hopefully he knows it. Just moving everything out of DC would do more the Drain The Swamp than just about anything else he could legally do.
...but at least this is a start!
What was it before the Obama administration? A real journalist would have asked...
Sounds like a lot of patronage jobholders who were placed in federal jobs to give them an income while they really work on political objectives quite because they aren’t going to be able to work on their political team from far away in Tornado Alley...even though their paycheck would go a lot farther outside DC.
We went back to the east coast with a couple of the kids a few years ago. NYC with the first meeting place and church with George Washington. Then crossing the Delaware. Then Valley Forge. Then Philly, with the small meeting room of the Constitutional Congress.
Then Washington DC. As we walked along the Block square building of the USDA - 4(?) stories tall, I commented to the kids “I’m guessing those guys 240 years ago in Philly never dreamed that there would be this huge building full of people just to tell farmers how to farm!”
“USDA staffers quit en masse as Trump administration eyes moving offices out of DC”
Great! Try getting those fed salaries and bennies in the normal world you losers! Saves us a RIF and buyouts.
Sure. And every month, thousands of people in the private sector decline transfers, quit and find new jobs, which is what these federal employees are doing. The reporter in this story is hyping a very routine thing. Even in the federal service, office close and relocate with some frequency. Usually this is a matter of local and regional offices being realigned. And then there is the BRAC process in the military. The only thing that is unusual in this instance is that headquarters functions aren’t often redeployed into the field.
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