OPM tomorrow thumps up or down

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

DP, but this exchange is a diversion from the topic. Yes it is difficult to compete/hire in certain roles at certain agencies. Absolutely. In many others, it is not at all difficult.

But a "policy" that says that teleworking employees who have young children do not have to take leave on days when the schools are closed AND the federal offices are closed will get admin leave.....has absolutely no bearing on that fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

You are so clueless. We do have serious hiring and retention issues for GOOD employees.

I believe this for certain positions and offices. In my office we have a lot of employees who have been there forever and will never leave, I’ve attended several 70th birthday parties for my coworkers. They are very nice but this is clearly more money than any of these people would be paid elsewhere. The GS scale is not a great gauge of talent.

You're not wrong, although in my experience the people that stick around that long beyond MRA are usually pretty good, albeit certainly past their prime.

But that's just part of what perpetuates the problem. In some cases we're encouraging those subpar older employees to put off retirement because we can't recruit new employees at the salaries we're allowed to offer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

DP, but this exchange is a diversion from the topic. Yes it is difficult to compete/hire in certain roles at certain agencies. Absolutely. In many others, it is not at all difficult.

But a "policy" that says that teleworking employees who have young children do not have to take leave on days when the schools are closed AND the federal offices are closed will get admin leave.....has absolutely no bearing on that fact.

Sure it does. It makes it harder to recruit young employees that have (or intend to have) families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

DP, but this exchange is a diversion from the topic. Yes it is difficult to compete/hire in certain roles at certain agencies. Absolutely. In many others, it is not at all difficult.

But a "policy" that says that teleworking employees who have young children do not have to take leave on days when the schools are closed AND the federal offices are closed will get admin leave.....has absolutely no bearing on that fact.

Sure it does. It makes it harder to recruit young employees that have (or intend to have) families.

Not fair to anyone else though. Why am I teleworking on a snow day while my coworker with young kids gets to take off without using leave? I’d like a day off too, I’m already covering for these people during their endless paid parental leave times.

Either everyone gets admin leave, or everyone teleworks/takes annual leave. Seems most fair to do the latter.

[Anonymous]

what about tomorrow? open?

[Anonymous]

My colleagues with young kids decline the telework agreement for this exact reason. They want a true day off when federal buildings and schools are closed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

DP, but this exchange is a diversion from the topic. Yes it is difficult to compete/hire in certain roles at certain agencies. Absolutely. In many others, it is not at all difficult.

But a "policy" that says that teleworking employees who have young children do not have to take leave on days when the schools are closed AND the federal offices are closed will get admin leave.....has absolutely no bearing on that fact.

Sure it does. It makes it harder to recruit young employees that have (or intend to have) families.

Yeah, no. This is such a small narrow thing, nobody is making their professional decisions based on this. This is like saying that the make-or-break benefit is whether an employer offers pet insurance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

DP, but this exchange is a diversion from the topic. Yes it is difficult to compete/hire in certain roles at certain agencies. Absolutely. In many others, it is not at all difficult.

But a "policy" that says that teleworking employees who have young children do not have to take leave on days when the schools are closed AND the federal offices are closed will get admin leave.....has absolutely no bearing on that fact.

Sure it does. It makes it harder to recruit young employees that have (or intend to have) families.

Not fair to anyone else though. Why am I teleworking on a snow day while my coworker with young kids gets to take off without using leave? I’d like a day off too, I’m already covering for these people during their endless paid parental leave times.

Either everyone gets admin leave, or everyone teleworks/takes annual leave. Seems most fair to do the latter.

In a lot of professional positions, there's no covering for each other anyway, because work is too specialized. So it really works best if it's a snow day for everyone.

That being said, I completely disagree with the idea that we can't make things better for some people and some situations without makings things better for all people in all situations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

DP, but this exchange is a diversion from the topic. Yes it is difficult to compete/hire in certain roles at certain agencies. Absolutely. In many others, it is not at all difficult.

But a "policy" that says that teleworking employees who have young children do not have to take leave on days when the schools are closed AND the federal offices are closed will get admin leave.....has absolutely no bearing on that fact.

Sure it does. It makes it harder to recruit young employees that have (or intend to have) families.

Not fair to anyone else though. Why am I teleworking on a snow day while my coworker with young kids gets to take off without using leave? I’d like a day off too, I’m already covering for these people during their endless paid parental leave times.

Either everyone gets admin leave, or everyone teleworks/takes annual leave. Seems most fair to do the latter.

In a lot of professional positions, there's no covering for each other anyway, because work is too specialized. So it really works best if it's a snow day for everyone.

That being said, I completely disagree with the idea that we can't make things better for some people and some situations without makings things better for all people in all situations.

That’s how I felt until I had to manage a small team and when one person goes on an extended leave everyone else does a lot more work. It is not magically better for all people and in many cases you leave comes at a cost to someone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

New Feds can also be Boomers and GenXers, you know?

Yes, Gen Xer here who finally found a federal job at 50. They first few years were hard, because I used all my leave traveling to help sick elderly parents, until they died. Now I'm finally started to accrue leave.

The jump from 13 to 20 days after 3 years feels like a big leap, plus the 11 federal holidays that you can pair with a day or two of leave for a real vacation. You can also ask your supervisor to give you extra leave as your performance award, we regularly get an additional 40 hours / 5 days instead of a couple thousand $ in annual award and it's worth more to people who want to take vacations.

I'm always shocked when new feds don't negotiate leave. You can do that, you know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

I am in my seventh year of federal service and have seen other agencies get special authorization (which I think is grossly misplaced and which is a reflection of their desire for prestige hires rather than a matter of necessity) to hire attorneys.

As a non-supervisory GS-14 with significant telework flexibility, I make more per hour (considering my PTO, not to mention how much I actually work etc) than most attorneys in private practice. Left big law to come back to feds for health/work-life balance, and also because of the PTO (which I can actually use), the healthcare, the retirement, the student loan forgiveness, and the vibes.

Cold hard facts: there are not many people who get to keep earning big law salaries without making partner. Most feds are completely delusional about their private sector earning potential and the trade-offs (see: current round of tech layoffs). For sure there are some people with specialized science backgrounds etc who could do better elsewhere and I completely buy that there are recruiting issues in IT/tech but by and large they are few and far between and many feds think they’re gods gift and under-compensated when in fact they could not hack it in the private sector. There are more overpaid feds than underpaid ones, that’s for sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what about tomorrow? open?

This is what I am here for!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be a dangerous move for opm to rely on telework as the solution for bad weather given the many who can’t telework. I guess the rest of us don’t exist. Yay I get to lose more leave days!

Honestly though it’s on trend for fed govt . I’ve been feeling more and more every year that my non- telework fed job just hates parents and wants us all to quit.

There won’t be enough snow to warrant closing the government. Employees without telework agreements would get a snow day if the weather was worse but it’s been a few years since we’ve had a decent snowstorm.

It’s a joke for those of us who can’t telework- over in the school forums everyone’s saying to get your contingency plan in place because it will be too dangerous for teachers to drive to school but it’s fine for the rest of us to drive to work?

I’m boiling. It is totally unfair. Teachers (public employees, mind you) get a free day while we have to risk our lives either commuting in, burn a day of leave, or try to balance the kids, who’ll want to play in the snow, while productively WFHing. Either OPM needs to reevaluate its priorities and commitment to families, or schools need to be the last service to close.

Stop whining. As feds we get a ton of leave plus more telework than most of our peers. One of the only drawbacks to these perks is we are expected to be prepared to telework during what used to be snow days. Would you rather go back to the office 4/5 days a week like we did 20 years ago? There is nothing unfair about our situation

The feds get tons of leave thing is not fully accurate. Those of us who were feds back when they had no maternity leave (just a few short years ago) have NEVER recovered. Most of us used every single leave hour to try to stay home the basic 12 weeks or used lwop. I had only finally built up a leave balance again when covid hit and none of us got infected in till after they removed special leave for it so my leave was gone when you added up 2 kids getting it separately and myself getting it all at diff times, that was almost 18 days of leave. Oh, and then my mom died. And then my kid got the flu. and then we were finally done with daycare and started public school which has closures practically every two weeks requiring use of leave of paying for camps if you can get it.

So a forced liberal leave day does upset me when it happens.

Please do not perpetuate the myth that all feds have tons of leave there are a lot of us who are struggling. I can barely save up enough. We have never gone on a vacation because I have no leave. All we do at most is a long weekend driving distance. I hate it.

The people I know in the private sector are all doing so much better than the federal employees in their 40s I know in this regard. ALL. The younger employees are far better off then we were if they decide to have families, but they have other challenges with cost-of-living.

You are confusing two things.

Do federal employees get a lot of leave? Yes, absolutely.
Have you personally had reason to use most of that leave? Yes.

Boomer and GenX feds get tons of leave. New feds get 13 days.

Gen X fed who gets 26 days of annual leave per year, plus the 11 Federal holidays that we all get and 13 days of sick leave. Funny thing is I used to be a new young employee with 13 days, the first year I was a fed I worked every single work day and took zero leave, not on Christmas eve or the day after Thanksgiving or any time I might have liked to, just to start building it up. And then I had my kids with no paid parental leave so I used most of my sick and annual leave for that and again had to dig myself out of a hole. These are choices I made, understanding that it would be 15 years before I would end up in this position with 26 days a year. You will get there too.

PP here. I'm now an older Millennial fed manager. I've been down that road too and now am getting the 26 days. So sure, I get the good deal now, but I'd much rather have more sensible leave policies for the first 15 years than to get absurd amounts of leave after 15 years. At least we can offer parental leave. Until then it was particularly hard to try to play the "family-friendly atmosphere" card while recruiting new employees. It's still not easy when have to start people at 13 days, but I try to emphasize flex-time as a way of preserving leave.

13 days plus 11 federal holidays is not awful, I also offer time off awards to everyone after their first 6 months.

No, it isn't awful. But it doesn't make up for 30-50% lower salaries that we can offer compared to the private sector. And my agency cracked down on time-off awards a decade over. It's nearly impossible to get approval for more than a day.

My god, could feds stop generalizing? If positions were really paying 30-50% less than private sector (inclusive of benefits) we would see serious attrition and hiring issues. One agency that is having some trouble was able to get approval to bring people in at the 15-year leave accrual rate; others have non-GS salary bands. This is an issue in a SMALL handful of professional positions and yet people really want to pretend the majority of feds are underpaid — why the attachment to a demonstrable falsehood?

It's not a falsehood. I'm not claiming it is the case across all federal positions, but we are absolutely competing against employers offering much, much higher salaries and benefits that at least match what we offer. And it has made recruiting and retention incredibly difficult. We're not technically on the GS system, but we're subject to the same limitations. Some of it is self-imposed. In theory we could offer substantial annual bonuses, but our agency has decided it wouldn't be fair to other professional staff at the agency that wouldn't be eligible for those programs.

I get the distinct impression you don't actually work in a professional position in the federal government. And certainly not in an in-demand field.

DP, but this exchange is a diversion from the topic. Yes it is difficult to compete/hire in certain roles at certain agencies. Absolutely. In many others, it is not at all difficult.

But a "policy" that says that teleworking employees who have young children do not have to take leave on days when the schools are closed AND the federal offices are closed will get admin leave.....has absolutely no bearing on that fact.

Sure it does. It makes it harder to recruit young employees that have (or intend to have) families.

Not fair to anyone else though. Why am I teleworking on a snow day while my coworker with young kids gets to take off without using leave? I’d like a day off too, I’m already covering for these people during their endless paid parental leave times.

Either everyone gets admin leave, or everyone teleworks/takes annual leave. Seems most fair to do the latter.

I’m a parent and I agree with this. I think allowing just parents to take snow days will breed resentment. I appreciate the liberal leave and telework flexibility though.

[Anonymous]

I have a meeting I have to in for tomorrow. But I do want to know about status so I can judge what traffic will be like tomorrow morning.