"I Have My Dream Job – Please Let Me Do It"
'I feel … helpless:' About 50 people protest government shutdown at NASA's Johnson Space Center https://t.co/vX4oCiHdrW @NASA #NASA #Governmentshutdown pic.twitter.com/xyTZb5R87w
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) January 16, 2019
That sucks so much.
I hope the partially obscured sign in the background doesn’t say, “Will design spacesuits for food.”
I think I know someone in that picture!
I understand that the shutdown is a drag because it interrupts the work currently going on and will delay deadlines and milestones. I don’t see the drama for the individual though, aren’t all the federal employees getting back pay for the time off once the shutdown ends ?
You clearly have:
1. no idea how NASA works- there is a larger workforce of contractors, grantees, graduate students, and vendors who are not being paid and will almost certainly not be paid.
2. no understanding that every single employee – civil service or contractor – has a family, bills, and other financial responsibilities that are not being met for lack of a paycheck.
3. no empathy for the hardships everyone is going through. If I took your paycheck away – did not tell you if/when you’d be paid again, and then expect you to come back to work when I decided, how would you feel>?
Regarding 1.
That’s why I posed it in a question. Anyone that will not get back-pay definitely got the raw deal.
Regarding 2.
Yes i am sure that there are a few employees that live paycheck to paycheck at NASA but i doubt its the majority.
Regarding 3.
I usually have a pretty positive attitude, as long as you only “hold” my paycheck with a reasonable guarantee that i will get it in the end, I would probably just look at this as a forced paid vacation.
Again, my comments were based on the assumption that in the end the affected employees get paid for being furloughed.
You clearly did not read the words you wrote. Go bother another website.
Assuming that your views are informed mostly out of ignorance – I do it myself, with alarming frequency – maybe I can help.
The main thing is this: It is actually the case that the percentage of families living paycheck to paycheck is well into the majority. I’ve seen several figures; all show something around 72% or so. In fact, CNBC quotes another source:
There are lots of reasons that this is the case, reasons that range from the exigencies of social influences to personal irresponsibility to systemic deck-stacking. Whatever the reason, it’s a piss poor situation. Worse, the situation hasn’t been illuminated by the search light of missing paychecks as I had hoped.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/0…
Another impact of the shutdown wasn’t obvious to me until it showed up in a local newspaper this morning. It included a paragraph on a postdoc working with one of the government labs here in Boulder.
For people not familiar with them, postdocs are short (typically two year) positions for people who have just gotten their PhD. Some institutions are very emphatic about the limited duration, so it may really mean two years and not a day longer. At the end of that, the postdoc is expected to get a more permanent job, and one of the things potential employers look at is the work someone did during those two years. It should demonstrate he can do good, independent research without a thesis advisor looking over his shoulder.
If the work involves something like atmospheric science and seasonal variations, a month or longer data gap in the middle of winter might be a disaster. It it’s work by a postdoc, he might not have the luxury of shrugging and saying “oh well, I’ll just wait a year and use the January 2020 data.” So there are some people out there whose careers are getting seriously derailed by the shutdown.
You would think that the future employers would understand what happen, but then given the over production of science Ph.D.s relative to the job market for them it may well make the difference.
I’m sure people would be understanding, but I’m also afraid you’re right about the job market. “We understand why you haven’t published important results yet” just isn’t enough when another candidate actually has published important results.
It’s more likely the current employers will be more understanding, and give the affected postdocs an extra few months instead of insisting on a strict two-year contract. But the stricter institutions tend to be the larger and more bureaucratic ones. That may make exceptions and an understanding treatment of special circumstances more difficult.