“I’ve been in the military and the GS world, and seen the various angles of the overall problem. “
I have had similar actual experiences. My take is the problem is upper management allowing this. I worked in a shop where mid-level supervisors watched porn, slept, drove around drinking in military housing, played cards, anything but work. When their equipment went to hell due to lack of maintenance they’d hire a contract. I’m not making this up.
There’s a good percentage of the civilian federal workforce that do work, they are good people. In the shop above they were shunned.
IMO the federal workforce needs to be thinned with an effective appraisal system that actually identifies people that are useless. This overhaul needs to start with replacing upper management.
The ‘essential personnel only’ is the same as saying ‘no employees but the person who turns the heat on and off in the building and checks the plumbing for leaks’ rather than labeling any one who does the daily mission of the organization.
I agree with those who say that the government can and should be trimmed, but to think that the ‘essential personnel only’ designation actually applies to folks who perform the daily mission is a false impression.
Many years ago, on active duty, I was assigned to the Army Operations Center Watch Office (it operated 24/7/365, 12 hour shifts) in the Pentagon. The ten of us were “essential personnel,” the remainder of the Army staff sections were not on the “essential personnel” list for when the government was closed for weather or for budget reasons. All of us were selected for competency, but there was no way we could have run the entire Army on a daily basis if all of the other Army staff and civilians were fired because they were not ‘mission essential.’