Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'm sorry , as OP and a Fed who knows how much contractors make I don't give a rats ass about your layooff. I'm sure you all have had plenty of opportunities to come on board at our shitty pay scale but stayed your course. The outrageous billing of many of these companies is partly to blame for the money shortfall.

Wow, a Fed whose also a jacka$$. You're the reason so many non-feds hate civil servants. I make roughly 10-15% over what my civil servant counterparts make. Which nowhere NEAR makes up for all of the perks you civil servants get. I get combined 4 weeks of PTO, that's combined annual leave and sick leave. Most civil servants with my level of experience get six weeks of annual leave, plus one week of sick leave. In other words, you get three weeks paid leave more than I do PER YEAR. Your benefits package is much better. Your TSP is significantly better than my 401K. Your employer, the US government puts in a lot more money into your TSP than my employer does. Over the course of 10 years, not even your full career in the civil service, you will more than make up the difference in our pay inequity. You also have better long-term care, short-term disability, long-term disability benefits. You get much more excused absences than we do. When the government gives 2 hour or 4 hour early dismissal? Never includes contractors. You get the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve excusal from the President? Never includes contractors. You get the majority of snow days. Most of us have to report to our contractor headquarters and still work. Your benefits are worth at least twice what our difference in pay is.

I have a lot of sympathy for most civil servants, but not you. You'll probably get furloughed, because karma is a bitch. Just like you.

x1000. Beautifully said. Thank you.

Anonymous wrote:

You also have better long-term care, short-term disability, long-term disability benefits. You get much more excused absences than we do. When the government gives 2 hour or 4 hour early dismissal? Never includes contractors. You get the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve excusal from the President?

There is no "long term care" or "disability benefit" provided federal employees. Use up you sick days, you're done, that's it. The day after Thanksgiving is NOT a federal holiday. If you take it, it comes out of annual leave. And yes, the president often dismisses federal workers a few hours early on Christmas Eve. If you'd planned ahead to take that day off, it comes out of your annual leave. Only workers at their duty stations enjoy the president's gesture. So please stop bitching about two hours per year that someone else "gets." BTW, as a federal employee, I spent Thanksgiving Day up to my hips in muck after Hurricane Sandy last fall. I was glad to do it - hope you enjoyed the football game, whiner.

Anonymous wrote:

You also have better long-term care, short-term disability, long-term disability benefits. You get much more excused absences than we do. When the government gives 2 hour or 4 hour early dismissal? Never includes contractors. You get the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve excusal from the President?

There is no "long term care" or "disability benefit" provided federal employees. Use up you sick days, you're done, that's it. The day after Thanksgiving is NOT a federal holiday. If you take it, it comes out of annual leave. And yes, the president often dismisses federal workers a few hours early on Christmas Eve. If you'd planned ahead to take that day off, it comes out of your annual leave. Only workers at their duty stations enjoy the president's gesture. So please stop bitching about two hours per year that someone else "gets." BTW, as a federal employee, I spent Thanksgiving Day up to my hips in muck after Hurricane Sandy last fall. I was glad to do it - hope you enjoyed the football game, whiner.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'm sorry , as OP and a Fed who knows how much contractors make I don't give a rats ass about your layooff. I'm sure you all have had plenty of opportunities to come on board at our shitty pay scale but stayed your course. The outrageous billing of many of these companies is partly to blame for the money shortfall.

Wow, a Fed whose also a jacka$$. You're the reason so many non-feds hate civil servants. I make roughly 10-15% over what my civil servant counterparts make. Which nowhere NEAR makes up for all of the perks you civil servants get. I get combined 4 weeks of PTO, that's combined annual leave and sick leave. Most civil servants with my level of experience get six weeks of annual leave, plus one week of sick leave. In other words, you get three weeks paid leave more than I do PER YEAR. Your benefits package is much better. Your TSP is significantly better than my 401K. Your employer, the US government puts in a lot more money into your TSP than my employer does. Over the course of 10 years, not even your full career in the civil service, you will more than make up the difference in our pay inequity. You also have better long-term care, short-term disability, long-term disability benefits. You get much more excused absences than we do. When the government gives 2 hour or 4 hour early dismissal? Never includes contractors. You get the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve excusal from the President? Never includes contractors. You get the majority of snow days. Most of us have to report to our contractor headquarters and still work. Your benefits are worth at least twice what our difference in pay is.

I have a lot of sympathy for most civil servants, but not you. You'll probably get furloughed, because karma is a bitch. Just like you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My agency/dept is not having furloughs, and we don't have any contractors--we got rid of them last year.

CIA?

Anonymous wrote:yet if you read the Real Estate forum of DCUM, you are led to believe that DC real estate is ON FIRE, UNTOUCHABLE and you better jump in now or else....really?

I think that what I've read on these 8 pages is far more telling of the shit that is about to hit the fan than anything I read over there.

You also have better long-term care, short-term disability, long-term disability benefits. You get much more excused absences than we do. When the government gives 2 hour or 4 hour early dismissal? Never includes contractors. You get the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve excusal from the President?

Anonymous wrote:
I'm sorry , as OP and a Fed who knows how much contractors make I don't give a rats ass about your layooff. I'm sure you all have had plenty of opportunities to come on board at our shitty pay scale but stayed your course. The outrageous billing of many of these companies is partly to blame for the money shortfall.

Anonymous wrote:
I'm sorry , as OP and a Fed who knows how much contractors make I don't give a rats ass about your layooff. I'm sure you all have had plenty of opportunities to come on board at our shitty pay scale but stayed your course. The outrageous billing of many of these companies is partly to blame for the money shortfall.

Anonymous wrote:Take 2 without the erroneous quote delimiter.

You all stupid. contracts are funded through the fiscal year so no lay offs yet . Just excuses to cut dress weight.

You are incorrect. Contracts are committed through the term of the contract, but funding is done dynamically throughout the fiscal year often by quarters. It's rare that a contract is funded for an entire year at a time. I've worked primarily on five year contracts that are committed through tasks. The exact amount of money for the task varies and not only year-to-year, but often quarter-to-quarter. I've worked on contracts where in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, depending on how much money the directorate or division has to commit, the amount allocated to the job order that the contract bills to changes. I've seen layoffs mid-year when the CO or the COTR on a contract decides that they need to save money and will decrease the amount allocated to the contract and tells the contractor that X task and Y task will receive less funding and which parts of the task do not need to be completed. Often this means that certain jobs will be downsized/laid off. Contractors have *NO* job security even when they are on a multi-year contact. Over my 20 years at this agency, I have seen many, many people who have been laid off in the middle of the contract and others signed on (and even in a couple of cases, the laid off person was rehired later) as the agency had money to commit to the contract.

Anonymous wrote:For those with jobs in the fed, I'd love to work there even with furlough. You don't go through layoffs every fucking quarter. You have a steady paycheck and benefits.

Signed,
Laid off worker

Just to differentiate, you are talking about civil servants. For those of us contracting to the federal government, we are subject to the whims of Congress and our agency. I was laid off for 6 months on my last contract because the division decided that they did not have the amount of funds to fund all staff for the remainder of the fiscal year. I was on a team of seven and had just switched from another task that had achieved end-of-life, but since I had the least seniority on the current task, I was let go. In 20 years, I've known many (talking hundreds) of contractors who have left the agency and then come back. And others who have left the agency and then struggled to get back to contracting at this agency (people like working at this agency).