Well that was a fun first furlough day!

[Anonymous]

Yeeeaaa baby! When is the next sleep in day so I don't have to leave so early? Driving like a normal person...woohoo!

[Anonymous]

I enjoyed being emailed the whole day by my office and people on the Hill. They knew I was furloughed, but I guess it doesn't really count?

DOD has TERRIBLE plans for this. I'm off at different days of the week every day. It should have been everyone on the same day. Not to give a bigger impact, but to have some idea of when everyone would be off and tamper expectations.

I know we aren't supposed to do work on our furlough days, but when your boss is the one emailing you?

it's also difficult for the military to understand what this all means. They are working, so they keep sending us emails.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I enjoyed being emailed the whole day by my office and people on the Hill. They knew I was furloughed, but I guess it doesn't really count?

DOD has TERRIBLE plans for this. I'm off at different days of the week every day. It should have been everyone on the same day. Not to give a bigger impact, but to have some idea of when everyone would be off and tamper expectations.

I know we aren't supposed to do work on our furlough days, but when your boss is the one emailing you?

it's also difficult for the military to understand what this all means. They are working, so they keep sending us emails.

Too funny. But don't make it your problem. Put an auto reply on your email that says "My employment has been interruped temporarily by planned furlough. I will respond to your message when I return to work on (date)."

The End.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the commute was fantastic - but I am sorry for all the people who are taking a cut.

I could not imagine taking a 10 - 20% paycut. And if you have a spouse in government as well.

I am angry with leaders in both agencies and in Senate / House who could not figure out how to make it work.

It's a 20% cut for three months not for the whole year. That works out to 5% for the year. Sucks, but better than not having a job.

You are both correct and incorrect. It is a 20% cute for the next three months. There will be deeper cuts for next year and the next. Sequestration is 10 years of deep cuts that are pretty arbitrary. So agencies that got off the hook this FY potentially could be furloughed next. 10 years of paycuts. That is HUGE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So we've had the sequester for a few months now, and has the country collapsed? A few annoyances here and there, but nothing major.

I think forcing the entire government to trim a bit of fat is not a bad thing. It's what we all did in the private sector a few years ago when the economic crisis really hit.

These cuts are mandated and very arbitrary though. They are not rational cuts (i.e, getting rid of personnel when there job is removed) and in some cases they could be dangerous. Personally I do not want the Bureau of Prisons or ICE on the cutting board. And what about morale? I would love to see the private sector say hey - we are going to cut your pay 20% for the next 10 years regardless of your performance or the necessity of your job funciton.

[Anonymous]

Sequestration may be only a frustration for furloughed govt workers and the contractors who have to wait til Monday to hear back from them, but it has been deeply harmful to more vulnerable and less vocal people, like children and families in Head Start programs:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/sequestration-head-start_n_3562607.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

[Anonymous]

Sequestration is more than a frustration to those employees that will not have the money to pay their bills. And it is a travesty that programs like Headstart are being effected.

But, let's face it, the general public doesn't care because they don't think it effects them personally. Hell, people on here love furlough days because it lightens traffic. The focus should be on voting out the Congress we have or forcing them to take part in the same cost saving measures the rest of the government has to do. Instead their staffer are getting their college paid for and basically getting paid for being ineffective. Why do the President and Congress get vacations when they can't pass a budget?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So we've had the sequester for a few months now, and has the country collapsed? A few annoyances here and there, but nothing major.

I think forcing the entire government to trim a bit of fat is not a bad thing. It's what we all did in the private sector a few years ago when the economic crisis really hit.

These cuts are mandated and very arbitrary though. They are not rational cuts (i.e, getting rid of personnel when there job is removed) and in some cases they could be dangerous. Personally I do not want the Bureau of Prisons or ICE on the cutting board. And what about morale? I would love to see the private sector say hey - we are going to cut your pay 20% for the next 10 years regardless of your performance or the necessity of your job funciton.

That happens all the time though. That's why people get pissed at public employees who think its in any way abnormal. Paycuts happen. Salary freezes happen. I even worked for a company that asked its staff to take a 10% paycut, and 75% volunteered - and that was just a straight cut, it wasnt a "day off" and less pay. I myself was furloughed for 11 months at another company along with 500 people at 25% of my pay.

What the furlough should have been is not a furlough - but an across the board 10% pay cut for all employees above $40,000 a year. Period. That means no productivity loss, and those that don't like it can leave an opening for someone who is more than happy to serve their country and work.

[Anonymous]

If they would only fire half the lazy and useless government secretaries they could keep the people that actually work.

[Anonymous]

Are those being furloughed furloughed because they don't provide valuable services/possess unique and valuable skillset so they get some time off instead of losing their jobs? Or they do provide value services but got days cut anyway?

[Anonymous]

OP, sorry to hear it was a 12hr day for you. I'm a contractor and the DoD agency I support is pretty specific in its policy that the work of the furloughed worker cannot just be picked up by a contractor or another government employee not on furlough. The point is that it's work that just isn't getting done.

The agency head is seriously pissed at having to furlough since this agency was able to come up with cuts without them, but DOD policy is mandating that everyone do furloughs because organizations like Army and Air Force couldn't come up with the 10% cuts on their own, so everyone is sharing the pain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are those being furloughed furloughed because they don't provide valuable services/possess unique and valuable skillset so they get some time off instead of losing their jobs? Or they do provide value services but got days cut anyway?

Geez. Where have you been? The whole point of sequestration/furloughs is that it is an arbitrary, across the board cut to everything. It has nothing to do with need, productivity, merit or anything else that is rational.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are those being furloughed furloughed because they don't provide valuable services/possess unique and valuable skillset so they get some time off instead of losing their jobs? Or they do provide value services but got days cut anyway?

You can't easily do layoffs (reductions in force) in the government without using some complex formulae and looking across entire agencies. And furloughs are not targeted at individual workers or their individual skill sets. It's targeted at usually the entire workforce. So the good ones and the bad ones get their pay reduced.

The rules about how to enact sequestration cuts were capricious and arbitrary. They were designed to be so that Congress wouldn't be tempted to not set the budget. The only people that fooled was Congress. Anyone else could see that we have such a bunch of lily-livered political hacks that let Fox and MSNBC talking head BS turn them into cowards that we knew that any kind of sanity and compromise would never happen.

I wish there was some way to recall Congress - all of them en masse. They are the ones with no skills and not doing the basic job they were contracted to do.

[jindc]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a contractor and the DoD agency I support is pretty specific in its policy that the work of the furloughed worker cannot just be picked up by a contractor or another government employee not on furlough. The point is that it's work that just isn't getting done.

This is CLEARLY not the case even though it's the law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So we've had the sequester for a few months now, and has the country collapsed? A few annoyances here and there, but nothing major.

I think forcing the entire government to trim a bit of fat is not a bad thing. It's what we all did in the private sector a few years ago when the economic crisis really hit.

These cuts are mandated and very arbitrary though. They are not rational cuts (i.e, getting rid of personnel when there job is removed) and in some cases they could be dangerous. Personally I do not want the Bureau of Prisons or ICE on the cutting board. And what about morale? I would love to see the private sector say hey - we are going to cut your pay 20% for the next 10 years regardless of your performance or the necessity of your job funciton.

That happens all the time though. That's why people get pissed at public employees who think its in any way abnormal. Paycuts happen. Salary freezes happen. I even worked for a company that asked its staff to take a 10% paycut, and 75% volunteered - and that was just a straight cut, it wasnt a "day off" and less pay. I myself was furloughed for 11 months at another company along with 500 people at 25% of my pay.

What the furlough should have been is not a furlough - but an across the board 10% pay cut for all employees above $40,000 a year. Period. That means no productivity loss, and those that don't like it can leave an opening for someone who is more than happy to serve their country and work.

You have got to be kidding me. If you want government to work well, you have to incentivize performance. You are not going to being able to retain your best staff who are qualified to go make decent money elsewhere if you just cut everyone's pay arbitrarily. You need to be able to reward the people who are working hard and producing high quality work above the people who are just showing up, or you will lose them. The quality of government services will suffer. There are a lot of really talented, intelligent government workers who WANT to "serve their country and work" but they have plenty of employment options... and don't you want good people working for the government?

Also, if Congress wants to cut spending, they should actually have the balls to decide WHAT to cut. I am all for cutting 5 - 10% from the federal budget. Congress needs to look at what programs are worth the money, and which ones aren't, and make cuts accordingly. Not only that, but Congress should allow more flexibility for agencies to find X% of cuts, rather than just blindly cutting X% of everything.

I really don't understand the mentality of this PP.