Trump has a plan for government workers. They’re not going to like it., Washington Post
“President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation. Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government’s dime and less generous pensions – these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January. These changes were once unthinkable to federal employees, their unions and their supporters in Congress. But Trump’s election as an outsider promising to shake up a system he told voters is awash in “waste, fraud and abuse” has conservatives optimistic that they could do now what Republicans have been unable to do in the 133 years since the modern civil service was created.”
These attacks on the federal workforce are misguided and I’ll informed. If anything the federal workforce in the US is within what you see in any advanced economy, even less by numbers than many. The numbers are found in many graphs and analysis out there like -》
http://blogs.wsj.com/econom…
Pay schemes that give more latitude to the bosses? Often tried, all to I’ll effect. The recent scheme tried in DoD was stopped as the numbers came in showing that women and minorities did not get the promotions just their showing in the workforce would indicate as natural, i.e., allow certain low level judgement in, get racism, sexism out.
These Republican schemes have nothing to do with government working smarter, or better, or more effectively for the people the government serves. It’s all about weakening government so that others, companies, the wealthy, and the powerful elsewhere can do as they please with no restraint. This is as it always was, since before Reagan, just with more rigorous and sophisticated phrases and manipulating of people, encouraging thinking that a “smaller” government is needed.
Wealth concentration has probably accelerated and caused this dangerous trend, as it is a view created more successfully the more power goes away from government, as wealth concentrates and grows in very small groups. As is often observed, we can concentrate wealth, or we can have democracy, but not both.
There is a storm coming.
The rest of the economy has seen layoffs, pay freezes, benefit cost increases, and promotion freezes. Why not civil service?
When ISS was finished building and STS was shut down, how many civil service jobs were lost at NASA? From what I can see, none were. Instead, they were transferred onto other programs where they caused a lot of headaches on one I worked on.
The useful ability to fire low performing personnel is only one aspect to effectively managing a work force. The complementary ability to hire (not to mention retain) exceptional people is the other, and NASA is not winning this battle. A 3 year hiring freeze, along with 2 consecutive sub 2% pay raises, over the last 5 years or so has already made it hard for NASA to compete, and many of these “new” policies would simply be more of the same. Given the fact that NASA’s work force already skews old, with many of the best and brightest close to retirement, how is all of this going to make NASA great again? (Hint, it isn’t)
Except it is no longer politically correct for NASA to hire the “best and the brightest” FYI
http://www.al.com/news/hunt…
‘We’re not doing our job,’ NASA leader tells Alabama rocket engineers
‘”We are not doing our job,” NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman told a roomful of aerospace engineers in Huntsville Thursday. “I can put it clearly on us.”’
‘”We said, ‘You have to be the best and brightest in calculus and math and physics.’ Well, how intimidating is that?” Newman asked. “No, no, no. I say it’s a different conversation. ‘You want to find life in the universe? You want to build rockets? Then, you’re in.'”
Is it any wonder the “best and the brightest” are lining up to work for SpaceX and Blue Origin where they are welcomed?
as someone poised to graduate with a PhD (here’s hoping) within the next 2 years, this comment hits particularly well. I’ve seen more than a few exceptionally talented individuals graduate recently and none of them went to NASA. Why? The proposition is weak.
So with the brightest getting closer to retirement, how can the lazy ones make NASA great?
You got a pay raise?!!!
Of course, for every firm that has imposed pay cuts, there are other private sector firms that have done very well the past 10 years too. And most firms that imposed pay cuts in 2009, probably have given some raises since.
Overall, total compensation increases for federal employees are *lower* than the average total compensation increase for private sector workers from 2009-2015.
Feds did better than the private sector in 2009 and maybe 2010, but have lagged behind ever since.
I don’t imagine all segments of the economy saw that, and certainly not at this point. Civil service saw all of the above except layoffs. Not sure why there is a desire to continue punishing civil servants… It’s not easy to fire a civil servant, but it can be and is done. Due to wrongful termination laws, private firms don’t undertake firing lightly either. The significant difference seems to be that private firms can layoff more easily than the federal government. Civil service slots are competitive, at least at NASA, so there is some selective pressure towards better performers. Working against that is that pay isn’t comparable to industry. I believe contractors make up the majority of the federal workforce, and they are more expensive… e.g., for the cost of 2 NASA contractors you could pay for 3 civil servants. That’s because of higher wages and overhead. Sure there’s waste in government, but there’s also waste in private industry. Think of Apple’s new headquarters… oddly people don’t seem to get upset about that. You’ll see waste in any large enterprise… especially when they’re something close to a monopoly.
Well, according to the Washington Post story, many people on both sides, disagree. And don’t think the Post can be accused of right-wing bias. It’s towards the end of the story, but:
“Many inside and outside government agree that change to the way federal workers are hired, promoted and disciplined is long overdue. Employees under investigation for breaking the rules can sit at home for years — collecting paychecks and benefits — while their cases drag on. Performance rankings are widely panned as a joke, because the vast majority of workers are rated as exceeding expectations or doing outstanding work.
Federal workers are seldom fired for poor performance — and it can take years for managers to make a successful case for dismissal for misconduct. About 0.5 percent of the civil service gets fired every year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
I’d say, if more than 50% of the people are reviewed as being above average, there is a problem. And saying the US government’s bureaucracy is on par with that of other advanced economies is damning with faint praise. I think it’s pretty clear there is a problem. What isn’t clear (to me) is if the answer is burning everything to the ground and starting over. That sounds a bit extreme.
For jobs that are extremely selective and competitive, at elite organizations, you have to be careful with a simple rank-and-stack approach.
Are you comparing astronauts to each other, or to some general population? Can an astronaut who is below average with respect to other astronauts still be an outstanding performer with respect to the standards you care about, given that the selection process is so rigorous? Given the tremendous time/money invested in training a new astronaut, a general federal rule that said “Fire the worst 10% of each occupation category each year” might be a terrible idea — even if it would be a great idea for file clerks.
As well, the logic that connects developing a better performance appraisal system for federal employees, alongside more accountability, to burning it all down, evades me. It’s irrational at least (and I’m being kind).
Again, ulterior motives mostly, misconceptions as well, are at the heart of what the WaPo article is reporting, and how people feel. And it’s these ulterior motives and misconceptions that are really news worthy.
“vast majority of workers are rated as exceeding expectations or doing outstanding work.”
Is this because there are only three checkboxes for employee evaluation? Bad, Average, Excellent. Checkmark in the Bad box means dismissal, so this leaves combination of the two other boxes (yes, I’ve exaggerated some of this). But look at the big picture. How much NASA money is civil servant salaries compared to contractor positions (vast majority of workforce at Centers) and contracts issued to various companies?
I think Colin Sefter makes an excellent observation as NASA is an aging workforce (I believe there was a thread about a huge brain drain as many of these older people retire), hiring freeze puts further squeeze to bring in young people. And we see SpaceX has much younger workforce.
About time. This will put the civil servants more even to the employees of Caltech who make up the workforce at JPL! This seems good to me, These changes are standard in industry.
The reason that the people elected the president-elect is to move beyond the Blue Social Model (see Walter Russel Mead). This means reigning in the cost of the Federal workforce, especially the pension costs. This is necessary if the taxpayers are going to be able to afford their government.
Sorry. But sometimes reality … makes people uncomfortable.
Storm_guy101 may be wrong. The storm is here.
Federal employee pensions were revamped a long time ago, back in the 80’s. 401K’s become the norm. The remaining “pensions” are now a smaller component of a Federal retirement system. As to “affording” government, I’d point you to many long term analysis and measures out there, of which this one below is just one. Our US Federal government is by most measures underfunded. Often this has merely resulted in state and local government picking up the slack, albeit often less efficiently. (i.e. The same syndrome of reducing property or state taxes and finding fees and tickets and tuition and all other costs just shoot up elsewhere).
http://blogs.wsj.com/econom…
If anyone has numbers, data, resources like money, or headcounts of civil servants, federal, state or otherwise, for the US and other advanced economies as benchmarks, showing that something is amiss and overly large in the US numbers, I’d welcome the reading. It does not exist, as much of this is more emotional, or misinformation, and about wholly different matters of who is trying to exert control, thru a false narrative among other means.
Government agencies always claim to be underfunded, nothing new there. But the first question is how much government do you need and how much is just a luxury? I like NASA and have an interest in space, but as someone who teaches strategic management I will ask the hard question that is standard when you start do a reorganization – is NASA a necessary government agency? Or a luxury America could survive without? Yes, it did appear to be needed when is was created in 1958, but is that same need there today?
So far the Trump Administration hasn’t gone that far and are just trimming along the edges. But as they trim they may well start asking those basic economic questions.
Well, as the saying goes, in God we trust, all other’s bring data.
And right now you’ll not find data that somehow the governments in advanced economies have run amuck in scale, headcount, resources, or other measures (with rare exception). While it’s a valid concern to want “better” government (basically my mantra), for any given resource to be spent responsibly, productively, facts need to inform such reform. Nearly all “small” government agenda’s are just hidden agenda’s not at all about the facts, or proper role of government, or it’s proper size. It’s about power, and people wanting to grow theirs, by weakening the government (among other strategies).
Before WW II the U.S did pretty well with a weak government going from a small band of settlers in the East to a continental wide economy that created the modern world. Science did pretty well too on funding from the wealthy industrialists.
Then the income tax expanded from the few to everyone, some fool brought air conditioning to Washington DC so the Congress critters stayed in town year round and the government blossomed in size while the rest of the nation declined, starting with the first industry to be micro-regulated – the railroads. Maybe its time for a reboot.
Also keep in mind that one of the strengths of the USA is that it has never been like other advanced countries. It wasn’t until the 20th Century that government started to micro-manage industries that had been micro-managed in Europe since they emerged. Sadly that micro-management has often resulted in their decline. Look at the trucking and railroad industries while the ICC governed them and then when the ICC was done away with. Look at airlines under micro-management and then when they were deregulated. Or with telephones when the government withdrew its protection of Ma Bell and let the courts break it up in response to a lawsuit from Sprint. Do you think Ma Bell would have approved of some computer firm developing the iPhone when they spent 70 years under the protection of government bureaucrats and regulation creating the best wired wall phone ever?
One wonders how far we would be in space today if it wasn’t started as a federal enterprise during the IGY and emerged as a commercial one from the start. Yes, we got to the Moon, but then the entire enterprise collapsed like a house of cards when the government changed direction and has been bouncing ever since with each new administration.
Ahh yes, the old -it was all so much better in 1912 argument- and all that. That could be a long discussion…mostly about how 1912 was not all it was cracked up to be, and times change, and society is increasingly complex and interconnected.
We have often ended up at a government program precisely because the private sector did not provide the product we wanted (disability insurance, health insurance in old age at a reasonable cost, a defense against being destitute in old age, especially as we urbanized, clean water, clean air, safe food, disaster response, safeguards against racism, sexism, fair commerce and basic freedoms across state lines, etc.)
I’ll take 2016, as bad a year as it’s shaping up to be.
I am not sure where 1912 comes from. You either misread what I wrote or are confusing
what I wrote with something you heard elsewhere.
I specifically stated World War 2 as the dividing line for four reasons. First, prior to the years leading up to WW II the federal government was only about 5% of the U.S. GDP. It quadruple to 20% of the GDP during the war, not unexpected,
but instead of dropping to pre-war levels after the war it remained in the 16-19% range of the GDP which is where it is at today. Second, it was also in those same years that deficit spending became normal. Again, this was necessary to win WWII, but instead of being a temporary blip as in the Civil War and WWI it remained the new norm and continues to this day. Third, it was also during this era that the Income tax expanded from just covering the top 1-2% of workers to covering nearly everyone. And to ensure it would be paid the government started withholding it. Again, what was necessary to fund WWII as an emergency became the new normal. And fourth, it was also in this time frame that cost-plus contracts became the normal model of procurement. Again, an emergency measure to win WWII.
In short before WW II government was a small part of the economy – only about 5%. After
WW II it was a major part – 16-20%, a role it has had until today. Part of this has been the global commitments of the U.S. with NATO as an example. Although the combined GDP of the other nations in NATO are greater than the U.S., the U.S. pays 70% of NATO costs, while they pay only 30%. Germany is an example. Under the NATO Treaty they are supposed to contribute 2% of the GDP to NATO. There actual contribution has always been under 1%.
Returning this to NASA, it is difficult to imagine it existing prior to WWII. Its precursor, NACA, was a very small agency that only did applied research to support the aviation industry, almost entirely from its headquarters which were at Langley. Science funding by the government was non-existent beyond applied research by
the Dept. of Agriculture and U.S.G.S. The Smithsonian did use its endowment to fund some basic studies, but they were limited.
So there is clearly room for downsizing of government. Again, using NASA as an example. If its mission is merely to explore the Solar System for science as many here argue and its original NACA mission of basic aeronautical research, it doesn’t need the huge legacy infrastructure, and costs it has today. It could be downsized to Langley for aviation research and to Goddard and JPL for is science mission. The rest of the agency and centers could be shutdown and its budget reduced to about $2-3 billion. You could even get that down to a $1 billion if you limit it to its pre-war mission of aeronautical research since the vision of space research being a federal responsibility also dates to the post WW II era of big government.
Note, this is not a recommendation, merely a review of how we got to where we are today in terms of big government which so many in Washington DC take for granted is the norm. It is also one of the basic ways you approach reorganization under a strategic management perspective – determine how you drifted to where you are and then have a discussion about if that is where you want to be. Do you want to eliminate HSF and have a science only NASA just sending robots throughout the Solar System? Or just the pre-war NACA supporting the aerospace industry? Or?
And it does return it to the above topic because the way you manage your workforce in a small organization with a distinct and narrow goal is different than a large one with multiple goals.
Actually, 4.5% of GDP is where the Federal Government is at. (Link below to numbers).
I believe from your high figures that your definition of “government” is committing a rather typical logic error, propagating a myth, conflating programs (like medicare and social security) and the military (which is not about “governing” either) with “governing”, which is all the rest. “Governing” is what I thought we were talking about.
Unfortunately, this ruse sowing confusion about the “size of government” also gets perpetrated by the “small” government crowd, as what starts as a discussion about regulations, or “governing”, or the “federal government” inevitably becomes some attack on medicare and social security, while increasing the military, none of which have to do with “government” and it’s scale.
We are at a record LOW of federal government spending – the “discretionary” part, as shown here , 4.5%. Yep, just like before WW2.
https://www.google.com/sear…
Sorry numbers guy, you need to do more research on the source for your numbers. You also need to read your tables better. I am using the official historical information provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/…
I am using Table 1.2
And I am talking about all government spending, not cherry picking just discretionary spending like you. And government obligations like Social Security and Medicare are part of the equation, like it or not.
But if you failed to verify accuracy of the source of your graph. It is not a government graph but from a private budget advocacy group, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and is dated Mar. 19, 2014. This private group produced it to illustrate their goal of hitting a pre-WW II level of discretionary spending in a decade. So it is NOT today’s actual spending data as you are claiming it is, but what this group is advocating the spending should be in a decade from the time it was produced to support their arguments.
If you were in my class I would dock you serious points for not researching your information source 🙂 Remember, when it comes to numbers – garbage in means garbage out.
I stand by my earlier comment in its sense of what a discussion about the size of government is about, or should be about. So we are at 6% not 4.5 percent for government today. Corrected. No one ever says small government meaning smaller medicare, or smaller military, or smaller social security. Though that is often the hidden agenda in the dog whistle call about smaller government, as stated before.
So you stand by your incorrect numbers from an advocacy group instead of the official ones and insist on cherry picking your definition of government spending, which is not how economists measure it.
But again, to return to the point of this thread. You are talking about increasing the productivity of a workforce that accounts for about a fifth of the U.S. economy. The improvement of their productivity will have benefits regardless of the size of the government or your definition on it.
Nobody who saw the unRIF-able-by-law civil servants at JSC counting the holes in the ceiling tiles after Shuttle is going to have a big problem with this.
At least within NASA, a large fraction of the workforce is selected based on performance. Since NASA is a desirable place to work, NASA can usually be very selective. There will always be a small percentage that get in in other ways-cronyism,nepotism, affirmative action. Its always been possible to get rid of people from civil service; the manager has to document the individuals performance. The real issue in NASA especially the last 10 or 15 years, is the management. Many are not competent. They frequently are not competent in managing people and frequently are not competent in their technical functions. Look at the recent RFI on SLS and Orion. After 7 years, they have just now figured out these systems are not affordable and there has to be an a!tentative? Everyone engaged in both projects have known not only from the 7 year ago start, but it goes back to Constellation, Ares V, the shut down of STS, figuring out an architecture and requirements and a program plan before deciding on a vehicle design and size…and now they have figured out they are spending too much money??? This is lame, incompetent, inept management at every step. That is 99% of what is wrong with NASA. Its not just Orion,Constellation or SLS, same thing with ISS, same thing with why STS costs never came down and improvements to the vehicle were never made. The rank and file is not the problem in NASAs case.
I think you can definitely make the case that its poor NASA management and that it goes back longer than 10 or 15 years. Recently Dava Neuman, the Deputy NASA Administrator, spoke at JSC about her experience as a principal investigator on Shuttle Mir. She said it was such a streamlined, simplified process and documentation-almost effortless for her and her students. The Mir process was based on earlier streamlined Shuttle and Spacehab (commercial) processes and negotiated internationally between the US and Russians with full participation by ESA and Canada both of which flew payloads. The process was thoroughly documented in program requirements documents and ISO documents. The documents included “blank books” that each PI was to complete to expedite the process.
The audience questioned why the ISS process has proven so difficult.
ISS management, first under Brinkley, then under Gerstenmaier, and later under Suffredini, all ensured that none of the people that had put the Mir process in place ever made it into the ISS program. Supposedly NASA-Mir was “ISS Phase I”, but in actuality the ISS managers saw the program as a separate entity and they wanted to take care of their own people-they wanted no part of the Mir program or the people who had gained the experience through the earlier programs.
The NASA-Mir program had its processes in place by 1995.
Recently the ISS program manager said a recent effort to streamline the integration process is paying off and has made processes far more efficient. (This is a bit doubtful as the re-flight rate of payloads on ISS is said to be down around 30%; 2/3 of the experimenters who fly a payload are not interested in doing it a second time.) But even if it were true that the new ISS process is far more efficient, you have to wonder why the program chose to throw away years; decades of experience. It only took the ISS program a little over 20 years to put a new and efficient process into place that may match what was already in place in 1995.
This was a tragic waste of resources, people and experience. It was not because the people or expertise were not available. It was not because the processes were not well known or thoroughly documented. It was simply because of management chauvinism and isolation. ISS management kept putting in place people who had zero experience on prior programs. But they “promoted within” and “took care of their people” while they wasted more than a decade of ISS capability. ISS has cost the taxpayers between $100 billion and 200 billion so was that $50 or 100 billion of wasted effort?
That is management failure, plain and simple.
One of the best NASA Watch posts ever. Keep on telling the truth Moonman and thank you!
The civil service is the largest employers of minorities & women. I can see that definitely changing under our new overlord…smh
“Government IS the problem”.
Ever since Mr. Reagan we’ve seen a snarky dissing of anything related to the government. It’s how the right was able to co-opt working people.
No surprises here.
Actually that is both incorrect and naïve. The teams knew what the rules were before the game started. It’s incorrect because it’s the equivalent of stating your team won because they scored fewer points but had more running yards. It’s naïve because if that was the standard for victory both teams would have played the game differently.
The Hillary Clinton campaign chose to write off rural
and small town America and to flyover the “flyover states” counting on urban voters in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee to carry those states for her. They did not. Instead they voted with their feet and stayed home in droves. Maybe her lost will remind the Democrats that there is a bit more to America than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C. the next time they are looking for votes.
The facts are that Hillary Clinton is ahead in the popular vote by 1.7 million votes. But, as you say, the rules are that the president wins via Electoral Votes.
The only thing this says to me is that there is no “mandate” here. Trump played the game better than Hillary, that is all.
Again, it’s irrelevant. As for the mandate, its not in terms of the popular vote but that the Republicans now have control of the Executive Branch, House of Representatives and Senate. The Democrats failed to take control of those as well. Its now just about the presidency.
Now its time to follow American tradition and see what the Republicans actually do with it and then judge. And being America its possible the mandate will be repealed in two years in mid-term elections. That is also part of the system.
Who knows, maybe a reorganized and revitalized NASA under President Trump will result in humans once again moving BEO.
Please.
Yes, the system is what it is. But the system doesn’t serve us well when in recent memory more folks wanted one candidate over the other. Nor does it serve us when the House similarly is skewed when comparing actual voters.
The notion that the Electoral College somehow ‘balances’ the states was a simple way to appease the slave states more than 100 years ago.
As you say, we all know the system. But the system doesn’t work.
No, it was to appease the small New England states who felt they would be overwhelmed by the larger population in slave states like New York, Virginia and North Carolina. And it does work in that it ensures that small states won’t be trampled on by a couple large ones.
Also, if you really drill down into the numbers you will find that Hillary’s lead in the popular vote is based on her lead in California where Donald Trump did very little campaigning because of the hostility he faced when in the state. Really, do you feel California is more important than all the other states?
I look at it as an MLB team scoring more points but only won 3 World Series games instead of 4 and losing the series.
Also, Hillary didn’t win a majority of the votes cast. Just the most for a candidate. And a lot of those can be accounted for in California where she is ahead by 3.5m votes.
The goal has nothing to do with saving money. It is simply to destroy any and all public service unions at federal and state levels. They are seen by the GOP as the most reliable organized power block that opposes their political and economic agenda, and they are also almost the last unions in general. The money behind the GOP does not like having to deal with equal partners, they rather that each worker has to face a corporation by themselves.
A single revolving door civil servant vs a corporation with a Congress that cuts regs (not view blocking windturbines)..hmm?
In fact, outsourcing often costs more. Its much more effective to examine programs and look for good policy, e.g. keystone-6000 jobs for 2 yrs vs long term costs are ~100B to 1T per year.
It does play well with social media, especially to those struggling to make ends meet, relying on the false hope of carbon fuel or tax cuts to all, taking away health care to 20M->will solve all ills.
Is this the role of the chief strategist, not good policy?
Unions echo what Ben Franklin said: “We all hang together, or we all hang separately.”
Public sector unions were also opposed by FDR.
He had a somewhat nuanced view. His basic objection seemed to be the right to strike as a tool for collective bargaining. Thus his use of the phrase in his explanation of opposition to collective bargaining “as usually understood.”
He wasn’t absolutist. The TVA was created in 1933 and while it does not specify allowing collective bargaining by law, it allowed it as TVA policy:
“Established by Congress in 1933, TVA is a regional development agency and a major electric utility. TVA management and employees operate under a collective bargaining policy and structure first adopted in 1935. “
He was talking about Civil Service employees. Show me where FDR opposed the right of teachers and police officers working for local municipalities to form unions.
From a letter from FDR: All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.
The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations.
Again it is with the qualification “as usually understood”.
It’s about time. Having worked at one of the NASA centers for 35 years, you see so many civil servants that might on a good week work 15 hours. There are a lot of hard working civil servants in NASA but it’s extremely difficult to fire the lazy civil servants.
It was disheartening for hard working contractor employees to get laid off while their lazy NASA counterparts get to keep their job.
There are few civil servants that have not had their funding cut and the job outsourced at the same time, with numerous examples of the costs increasing and decreasing.
There are numerous examples of bloated contracted out everything done in the private sector ‘laziness’, as well.
Corporations are great at short term gains..solves issues with layoffs. Less jobs…now what?..not our problem.
BTW:very disheartening. Care has to be taken with these efficiency gains, because the revolving door can sow wheat, but it can can quite easily sow weeds as well. Any merit in tweaking the rules to let them both grow together? How many SESs have been sent packing–sat on the ‘wrong’ side.
Another false dichonomy, two choices presented when their are many many other options left off of the table.
I worked for the Government for 24 years. There were many instances where one person in an office did most of the work while the others knew how to game the system and do almost nothing. As a matter of fact, I noticed a lot of these lifers would go out of their way NOT to do any work assigned to them.
Here’s a simple example that happened to my friend in Hawaii. He was 62 when his job got phased out. They gave him another job that nobody wanted. They stuck him out on a crowded operations floor and made him the go to guy for everybody’s computer/phone/TV/teleconferencing/wiring connectivity..all this stuff he didn’t know how to do. There were about a half dozen other govt. employees that were supposed to help out but they managed to hide in a side office behind a combo locked door. My friend wanted to keep his job, they had him standing on ladders changing light-bulbs in overhead projectors etc. All of these extra duties were not in his job description and he did manage to get a meeting with the board to discuss it. They didn’t want to rock the boat and went with the part that said “assist..”. Meanwhile, all the young 20 somethings played minesweeper behind combo protected doors.
Trump seems like he’s on the warpath to fix a long broken system. He very well may fail but he will go down as a folk hero amongst many.
Seems like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Bigelow Aerospace will soon have a hiring boom.