Monday, January 14, 2019

Thoughts on the shutdown

This is from one of the folks in our corner of the 'net:
I’ll tell y’all I’m affected by the shutdown. I’ve been “out-of-work” since Mon, Dec 24 (and who works Christmas Eve if they don’t need to?). Since I’m not a direct Federal employee, it’s doubtful I’ll get “back-pay”. Since the Dems have the House (and purse-strings), it wouldn’t surprise me that even Fed employees don’t get back pay. (“Take that, you meany orange guy!”)
...
I support the purpose of the shutdown. I accept that this issue is bigger than my pay. This was not unexpected nor announced out-of-the-blue; why didn’t people plan for this? It’s been coming since October.
Good luck to Quizikle during this period of extreme governmental FUBAR.

5 comments:

Gorges Smythe said...

Agreed.

Jonathan H said...

Congress has already passed a bill to give back pay to Federal workers, but it doesn't cover contractors.

But you have a good point - this has been coming, in fact it had already happened twice in 2018, yet they don't appear to have planned for it.
I found it interesting that some media groups were running sob stories of federal workers unable to pay their bills BEFORE they had missed any paychecks. Hmm...

SiGraybeard said...

Re: the back pay, I think it's well-known that the vast majority of permanent employees of the Fed.gov are Democrats. That means the Dems in the House are going to protect their fellow party members - aside from their inherent tendency to prefer the Fed.gov over all other work.

Contractors? Doubtful - and in a lot of cases it doesn't matter. If you're working for Major Government Contractor Incorporated, there's no reason at all to stop working on your deliverables, and unless the contract gets cancelled, payments pick up again after the shutdown. If it does get cancelled, the contracts usually have negotiated amounts the contractors get paid to stop (there are real costs associated with stopping a program: think "save your work").

Unknown said...

That assumes that your work is producing something of tangible value. I have friends that their work is "supporting" a Fed.gov person. They can't be in the office providing advice/expertise to someone that isn't there. No deliverable that they can turn in later...

Unknown said...

They can't be in the office providing advice/expertise to someone that isn't there....

So if these people are a higher grade then those you speak of, why do they need people to provide advice/expertise. We are obviously hiring morons to high positions.Exibit A people in high positions needing people to tell them what and how to do their jobs. I have done my job for 40 yrs and the only one that gave me guidance was when I was leaning it. My boss.