Anonymous wrote:Furloughs do not involve firing anyone or "trimming the fat." You are confusing furloughs and RIFs.

Right. More than likely, if your agency executes a furlough, you'll all be asked to take one unpaid day (or two) a pay-period. That could trim a lot of excess expense without having to resort to RIFs.

I heard it is 99% that the SQ will go through.

Furloughs do not involve firing anyone or "trimming the fat." You are confusing furloughs and RIFs.

The problem is that the furlough will impact people regardless of productivity.

The most productive thing for the government would be if every manager with lets say 50 employees or more would be told that they have to fire one person, and the decision on who to fire would be completely and totally exempt from civil service rules or procedures.

I promise you that they would jump at the chance to get rid of the one turkey in every office, and even with one less employee productivity would go up and cost would go down. But that will never happen.

It's nice to think that fat will be trimmed, but the law is specifically written not to allow that to actually happen. Any cuts are required to take place across the board, so no forced retirements and no cancellations of expensive or unnecessary capital projects (yes, DoD, that means you). Thus all employees being furloughed across the board.

I agree that agencies have seen this coming for a while and have been preparing as well as they can by putting holds on replacement hiring or postponing those projects that they can. The reality is that there is very little fat left to be trimmed in most places, as they are working with below-capacity staff (so hardly anyone is getting away with "doing nothing").

The kind of frustrating thing is that I don't think we (fed worker here) will know if we'll be furloughed until March 1. A tough waiting game.

Yes.

Anonymous wrote:Totally depends on the agency - my agency has been trimming things down for years, so there likely won't be any furloughs (we are already operating at only 70ish % of where we are supposed to be). I heard FBI is expecting minor furloughs and at least one pary of DOD is expecting major furloughs (1 day a week). Honestly, I think DOD will be the worst hit. Many federal agencies have been under a budget crunch for years now. DOD has not and they have a lot of fat to trim.

While I agree that DoD will be the worst hit, it's simply not true that the DoD as whole hasn't been under a budget crunch as well. It started with the in-sourcing initiative and continued through Gates' Efficiencies memo and still continues. There have been hiring freezes for several years, contracts have been losing some or all funding for just as long. They're working under the same CR as all the other federal agencies. They've been trimming the fat. It's just that they have a lot to trim so it's not as noticeable.

Anonymous wrote:Totally depends on the agency - my agency has been trimming things down for years, so there likely won't be any furloughs (we are already operating at only 70ish % of where we are supposed to be). I heard FBI is expecting minor furloughs and at least one pary of DOD is expecting major furloughs (1 day a week). Honestly, I think DOD will be the worst hit. Many federal agencies have been under a budget crunch for years now. DOD has not and they have a lot of fat to trim.

+1 my agency has never had a furlough and stayed open back in '96 when the rest of the govt shut down for a week.

If people actually went in and fired some of these people who do nothing, the government could easily cut costs and help with the deficit.

Oh well....wishful thinking.


Ain't that the truth.

agree

Totally depends on the agency - my agency has been trimming things down for years, so there likely won't be any furloughs (we are already operating at only 70ish % of where we are supposed to be). I heard FBI is expecting minor furloughs and at least one pary of DOD is expecting major furloughs (1 day a week). Honestly, I think DOD will be the worst hit. Many federal agencies have been under a budget crunch for years now. DOD has not and they have a lot of fat to trim.

Anonymous wrote:I think it really depends on the agency and the size.

I am a FED and personally its about time they trim some of the useless "fat" out of these agencies. Especially the larger ones where people are just waiting out their retirement or completely inept and collecting a pay check because they "cannot be fired."

If people actually went in and fired some of these people who do nothing, the government could easily cut costs and help with the deficit.

Oh well....wishful thinking.

Ain't that the truth.

I wonder what'll happen with the DoD.

I think it really depends on the agency and the size.

I am a FED and personally its about time they trim some of the useless "fat" out of these agencies. Especially the larger ones where people are just waiting out their retirement or completely inept and collecting a pay check because they "cannot be fired."

If people actually went in and fired some of these people who do nothing, the government could easily cut costs and help with the deficit.

Oh well....wishful thinking.

discuss.