Tag: employees
Hundreds Of Federal Employees Who Produce Weather Forecasts Fired -- Again

Hundreds Of Federal Employees Who Produce Weather Forecasts Fired -- Again

Several hundred federal workers who were reinstated in their roles after being fired in the early days of President Donald Trump's administration have now just been fired yet again.

The Guardian reported Thursday that approximately 800 workers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been at the whim of a "rollercoaster" of court rulings in recent months, which culminated in today's firings. Initially, after South African centibillionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) fired thousands of "probationary" workers (who have been in their roles for a year or less), a court order handed down in March ordered that they be hired back. But earlier this week, the Supreme Court reversed that order, and those workers were once again out of a job.

“Well after about 3 weeks of reinstatement, I, along with other probationary employees at NOAA, officially got 're-fired' today,” tweeted Dr. Andy Hazelton, who was a hurricane modeling scientist at the agency. “What a wild and silly process this has been.”

The firing of the NOAA workers comes just months before the official start of hurricane season, which usually begins on June 1 each year. The agency's forecasting experts are a critical tool for the administrations of hurricane-prone states as they make preparations to evacuate residents in the event of a major storm.

And aside from hurricane season, NOAA also assists with weather mapping that helps track thunderstorm patterns and alert Americans to potential tornadoes during the spring months. In an interview with the Guardian, Hazelton said that while remaining staff will do their best despite the cuts, the significant reduction in staffing will make their jobs more difficult.

“It’s going to create problems across the board,” Hazelton told the outlet. “It may be a slow process but the forecasts are going to suffer and as a result people will suffer.”

The loss of staffing at NOAA could also be felt beyond the United States' borders. According to the Guardian, other countries rely on findings from NOAA's scientists, satellites and intelligence. The agency has information-sharing agreements with countries in the Caribbean region, which can help local governments better prepare for disasters in the event of a major hurricane in the area.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Former Officials Warn Social Security Purge 'May Delay Retiree Benefits'

Former Officials Warn Social Security Purge 'May Delay Retiree Benefits'

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is now confirming that it plans to lay off 7,000 workers as President Donald Trump's administration proceeds with its mass firings of federal employees.

CNBC reported that while the SSA won't be laying off 50 percent of its workforce as it previously suggested, it's aiming to reduce its number of employees from 57,000 to 50,000. While the agency won't be gutted by the firings, Greg Senden— a paralegal analyst who worked at the SSA for 27 years — said it's likely the layoffs will harm beneficiaries.

""It's going to extend the amount of time that it takes for them to have their claim processed," said Senden, who helps the American Federation of Government Employees administer Social Security benefits to its retirees in six states. "It's going to extend the amount of time that they have to wait to get benefits.

The SSA, which is now led by acting commissioner Leland Dudek, said it aims to achieve most of its layoffs through offering early retirement to longtime employees and voluntary reassignments. It also hunted at "reduction-in-force actions that could include abolishment of organizations and positions."

Dudek, who the Washington Post reported praised South African centibillionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on social media, leapfrogged several more senior officials at the SSA to lead the agency last month. He took over after former acting commissioner Michelle King was effectively forced out after refusing to allow DOGE officials to access sensitive Social Security data.

Last month, Martin O'Malley — the Democratic Maryland ex-governor who served as SSA commissioner under former President Joe Biden — warned that if DOGE made drastic cuts to the agency, retirees could soon feel the brunt of it in their pockets.

"At this rate, they will break it. And they will break it fast, and there will be an interruption of benefits," O'Malley said. "I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Christopher Wray

Why Wray's Capitulation To Trump Is So Damaging To The Rule Of Law

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today that he will resign from the bureau in advance of Donald Trump taking office on January 20. He made the announcement at an emotional town hall with FBI employees in the building his proposed successor, Kash “I’m kissing your ass as fast as I can boss” Patel has sworn to close down and turn into a “museum of the deep state,” whatever the hell that is.

Wray’s resignation is a complete capitulation to a man his own agency established was a felon many times over. Wray’s FBI provided the agents who, under court order, searched Trump’s resort/hotel/residence, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach Florida, where Trump stored hundreds of classified documents in a bathroom and ballroom open to the public, as well as in a basement storage room that was so poorly-secured that a Department of Justice official, having inspected the room, ordered that the door be secured with a padlock.

Wray’s FBI agents were also involved in the investigation of the events surrounding the January 6 assault on the Capitol and Trump’s attempt to delay and overturn the certification of the 2020 election by the Congress. Using evidence accumulated by the FBI, the Department of Justice empaneled two grand juries in Washington D.C. which brought indictments of the former president for violating at least three federal crimes, including his attempt to use falsified electoral ballots to confuse and delay the certification of actual, legal electoral ballots by the Congress.

Evidence gathered by the FBI, including video surveillance tapes and interviews with Mar-a-Lago employees, was used to indict Trump for obstruction of justice when he instructed his employees to conceal classified documents from the FBI and order the destruction of other evidence, chiefly video tapes of Trump employees moving boxes of classified documents from one room to another before the FBI searched the premises in August of 2022.

The classified document indictments were dismissed by Trump’s hand-puppet, Florida Judge Eileen Cannon, in July of this year on a discredited and demonstrably false legal theory that Special Counsel Jack Smith had been illegally appointed. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland under a provision of Department of Justice policy that has been used multiple times in the past, including during Watergate and the investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal. No court has ever found the appointment of a Special Counsel to be outside the bounds of established DOJ procedure and law.

Special Counsel Smith filed a motion in late November to dismiss the charges against Trump for plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, acting in accordance with DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted for violating federal crimes. Since Trump was elected on November 5 and will be inaugurated on January 20, Smith concluded that Trump will soon be a sitting president and thus cannot face indictment. In his motion to dismiss, however, Smith noted that the prohibition of indicting Trump as a sitting president “is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind.”

Wray’s resignation sets a distressing precedent for any future investigations of federal crimes committed by senior government officials or powerful and wealthy public figures. Trump and his mouthpieces have wielded a battering ram of public criticism of Wray and FBI agents, accusing them of violating the law in the manner by which they went about investigating Trump’s January 6 actions and his removal of classified documents from the White House. Trump made Wray and the FBI an issue throughout his campaign for the White House, claiming falsely that he had been singled out for investigation and prosecution by an “out of control” DOJ and FBI.

At least three grand juries heard evidence of crimes Trump committed in the January 6 and classified documents cases and returned indictments based on that evidence.

Multiple Trump associates have pleaded guilty in cases involving the January 6 plot to overturn the election, including at least three of Trump’s attorneys, two of whom were charged with facilitating the fake elector scheme. Trump associates, including his attorneys, still face state indictments in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Trump has sworn to pardon the insurgents convicted of crimes on January 6, including more than 100 charged with violence against police officers. He will not be able to pardon his associates and lawyers who face indictments for committing state crimes.

Trump had appointed one of his chief lackeys, Patel, to serve as the replacement of Wray after he fired the FBI Director. That Wray has said he will resign before being fired is a total capitulation to Donald Trump’s wringing the last meaning from the rule of law in this country, which has held, since the signing of the Constitution, that no one is above the law. Trump’s Supreme Court destroyed that long-time American principle by ruling that Trump, and any other president, is absolutely immune from prosecution for crimes they commit as part of their “official duties” and presumed immune from crimes committed during unofficial acts while in office.

In addition, the Supreme Court found that evidence of crimes resulting from Trump’s conversations with government officials, such as employees of the DOJ, cannot be used to prove that such crimes were committed. One Supreme Court justice pointed out that evidence of bribery would be inadmissible if Trump used a government employee to collect a bribe.

That is how total the disintegration of the rule of law has become, because Donald Trump was able to appoint three of the arch-conservative justices on the Supreme Court who have carried out his will in the immunity decision and in others. The resignation of Christopher Wray is yet another nail in the coffin of our system of laws and Constitutional norms. By resigning even before Trump fired him, Wray will not be present as head of the FBI between now and January 20 to help protect the agency to which he has given his professional life.

Trump has screamed at his rallies and given interviews denouncing the FBI and the DOJ as parts of the so-called “deep state” and vowed to wreak retribution on the people who work there. Wray could use the time before Trump takes office to give speeches defending his agency and the FBI agents who have worked under him and followed his orders to carry out the investigation of Trump and others for breaking the law. While Wray cannot do anything to stop Trump from indicting the FBI agents who have worked under him, he could stand up to Trump and tell the world that his FBI agents are innocent men and women and were only doing their duty and following their oaths to support and defend the Constitution.

Wray’s resignation is like leaving a wounded comrade on the battlefield and running for cover. Maybe Wray can use his status as a former FBI director to help raise money to pay the lawyers that will be needed to defend the agents who worked under him when they searched Mar-a-Lago and found hundreds of classified documents. Trump has sworn to prosecute those agents, and Kash “I’ll follow any order you give me” Patel has said he will use the FBI to carry out retribution against any “enemy” Trump points him at.

This is a sad day for the FBI and for this country. If more government officials act the way Christopher Wray acted today, we will have many, many sad days ahead of us. This is the way that great nations fall: when people give in to authoritarian despots before they are even under their rule.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

How Does Unlimited Vacation Sound? Some Companies Are Trying It Out

How Does Unlimited Vacation Sound? Some Companies Are Trying It Out

By Steve Twedt, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

Unlimited vacation time sounds like a pretty good job perk.

Social media site LinkedIn this year joined the still-small-but-growing roster of companies offering employees as much time off as they’d like, with the understanding that the coupon is good only if they get their work done.

Estimates about how many companies offer open-ended vacations run in the 2 to 4 percent range, mostly small startups but including none other than General Electric, which earlier this year began offering unlimited vacation time to many of its executives.

What’s in it for the companies?

Besides being a strong recruitment and retention tool, such policies can free companies from any unused vacation pay liability if they currently allow vacation days to accrue. Proponents say the policies also bestow a sense of “ownership” among employees that cultivates a more committed workforce.

“This flexible scheduling has really come into play in the last six months to a year,” said Ginger Kochmer, the Philadelphia-based vice president of The Creative Group, a division of Robert Half International.

In a survey of 400 advertising and marketing executives and 400 office workers commissioned by The Creative Group earlier this year, 39 percent of executives said they believed productivity would increase if employees had unlimited time off. And 72 percent of managers and 56 percent of workers said they would probably take the same amount of time off.

That second finding is further backed up by a study commissioned by Project: Time Off, a Washington, D.C.-based group affiliated with the U.S. Travel Association. It found 41 percent of Americans did not plan to use all of their paid vacation days in 2014, leading the group to conclude “the benefits of vacation were no match for the fears that are keeping them at work.”

Those fears, in descending order, included the prospect of facing piles of work when they return, a belief that no one else can do their job (a smaller percentage worried they would be replaced) and lingering effects of a struggling national economy.

Some workers said they could not afford to take the time off, and others thought foregoing vacation would demonstrate dedication to their employer.

Open-ended vacation policies don’t work for every business. A year ago, the Chicago-based Tribune Co. offered unlimited time off for some salaried staff, then rescinded the policy one week later without explanation other than the change “had created confusion and concern.”

There are jobs that don’t easily lend themselves to an unlimited vacation policy, acknowledged Kochmer. In sales, for example, “The more hours you put in, obviously, the more success you’re going to have.”

And those who’ve adopted such a policy need to monitor and manage it, perhaps by scheduling quarterly performance reviews, to make sure the employee’s productivity doesn’t tail off.

But she said the idea of unlimited vacations is probably here to stay.

“Because the business environment is changing more drastically, you need to be flexible,” said Kochmer. “It really is becoming more common.”

©2015 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: In a survey of 400 advertising and marketing executives and 400 office workers commissioned by The Creative Group earlier this year, 39 percet of executives said they believed productivity would increase if employees had unlimited time off. (Fotolia)

 

Shop our Store

Headlines

Editor's Blog

Corona Virus

Trending

World