Shutdown-Follow up

[foxfirev5]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marko I didn't know that. I thought everyone got paid eventually. Can you provide me with a reference?

The few i refer to are the govt employees. The rest are not govt employees. The fixation on the 800k employees misses the big picture of the millions.

[MRG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by imoldernu In any case, it's over... at least for the next three weeks. I secretly believe it was because the government (all three parts) would never survive the travel shutdown for the SuperBowl.

Consider Atlanta and it's air traffic; the potential revenue for the city. In my opinion, it wouldn't be anything most folks would like on their resume. [emoji1]

I'm glad something is happening.

[njhowie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaronc879 My employer can tell me not to come to work for a few weeks and I get paid for those weeks when I eventually return to work. They can do that as often as they like. How is this a bad thing for the worker? It's bad for the taxpayer, not the worker.

It's bad for the worker if they do not have the savings to cover their living expenses during the period where they aren't receiving a paycheck. Some folks will miss the mortgage or rent payment, others the car payment. Certainly you've seen the stories of government workers at food pantries and soup kitchens. Isn't having to resort to that bad for the worker?

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/...7-c73a7cafc014

[imoldernu]

Here's the breakdown of the 800,000.

Quote:

More than 420,000 federal employees had to work without pay. An additional 380,000 were furloughed — meaning sent home without pay.

As to the contractors? i don't think we'll ever know the total trickle down effects.

We'll never know how many people had their home buying plans changed... the number of farmers who will plant without the guidance of the Dept of agriculture, the companies who lost employees because they couldn't pay them, the cost to rehire new employees and train them, because the shutdown led them to new jobs. How many people who live paycheck to paycheck will suffer, and how many will lose their credit standing...and on and on.

The government may stop, but the world goes on. Who knows how much will be lost? Pick your area of concern.

[marko]

Quote:

Originally Posted by foxfirev5 The few i refer to are the govt employees. The rest are not govt employees. The fixation on the 800k employees misses the big picture of the millions.

Thanks. I misunderstood your post.

[foxfirev5]

No problem. I often fail to explain myself in detail. Just ask my DW

[GrayHare]

Started work on taxes and I see a number of 2018 forms have not yet been released by the IRS. I wonder if the shutdown is part of the delay.

[jazz4cash]

Quote:

Originally Posted by imoldernu Agree with timo2. In any case, it's over... at least for the next three weeks. I secretly believe it was because the government (all three parts) would never survive the travel shutdown for the SuperBowl.

A NO Saints player jokingly blamed the horrible "no call" in the NFC Championship game on the shutdown. Maybe the Gov't was afraid they'd get blamed for blown calls in The Big Game.

[Amethyst]

That certainly describes my first couple of years on my own, as a Fed, until I landed an overtime gig by sheer luck and started making a little bank. If I had missed a biweekly check, I would have gone hungry, and I was too skinny back then as it was.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aerides When I was 26? Of course I'd heard of it, that was something other people had. I was making just enough to cover rent, gas, basics, etc. And I didn't have a family to raise. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who spent many of my younger years living paycheck-to-paycheck, and many more still with an emergency fund of $500 + credit cards. I wasn't stupid, I wasn't splurging, I had a roommate. I just wasn't making very much money, like a lot of people when they are starting out. Was probably 32+ before I had real cash savings to cover a long period.

[RetireBy90]

Quote:

Originally Posted by imoldernu Here's the breakdown of the 800,000. As to the contractors? i don't think we'll ever know the total trickle down effects. We'll never know how many people had their home buying plans changed... the number of farmers who will plant without the guidance of the Dept of agriculture, the companies who lost employees because they couldn't pay them, the cost to rehire new employees and train them, because the shutdown led them to new jobs. How many people who live paycheck to paycheck will suffer, and how many will lose their credit standing...and on and on. The government may stop, but the world goes on. Who knows how much will be lost? Pick your area of concern.

Was a contractor for 6 years, we did one shutdown for couple weeks. My govt rep had pre-funded our contract so I was able to keep 6 of 8 on my task employed. The other 2 got a week of work at the company HQ and then a week or so without pay. So just one example. The whole story IMHO is there is a great impact on some and minor on others but can't say it is a good thing no matter how you want to look at it there will be impacts.

[donheff]

I think the media misses the boat by largely ignoring contractors. I had about 100 Feds working for me and a little over 100 contractors. When we were furloughed I always worried more about my contractors because they were SOL if their employer couldn't cover them during the shutdown. Most of those affected who worked for big tech companies got paid (sometimes working on outside projects) some were just temporarily laid off. I imagine this 5 week shutdown was disastrous for a lot of them.

As for the Feds, so far Congress has always awarded back pay to furloughed employees but there is no prospective guarantee that they will do so. I can assure you that in some past periods of anti-government political rhetoric a lot of furloughed Feds were worried that back pay would not be forthcoming. Essential employees are not furloughed and are guaranteed eventual back back for the work they do.

[Amethyst]

I have always worked with the really big contractors (the famous Beltway Bandits). From what I heard, they were paid retroactively after furloughs (and of course this time around, DoD has a budget). Most had scarce skills; their companies didn't want them jumping ship.

But small, non-defense companies? Some of them are probably barely hanging on at this point. I am surprised to have read so little about this. No doubt more stories of contractor woe will shake out, now that the big "Will the government ever open up again" story is over.

Also you are correct; during furloughs (I was always "essential," for some reason) we were solemnly informed that there was no guarantee we would see back pay, although it was considered likely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff I think the media misses the boat by largely ignoring contractors. I had about 100 Feds working for me and a little over 100 contractors. When we were furloughed I always worried more about my contractors because they were SOL if their employer couldn't cover them during the shutdown. Most of those affected who worked for big tech companies got paid (sometimes working on outside projects) some were just temporarily laid off. I imagine this 5 week shutdown was disastrous for a lot of them. As for the Feds, so far Congress has always awarded back pay to furloughed employees but there is no prospective guarantee that they will do so. I can assure you that in some past periods of anti-government political rhetoric a lot of furloughed Feds were worried that back pay would not be forthcoming. Essential employees are not furloughed and are guaranteed eventual back back for the work they do.

[ERD50]

The whole thing sounds like Kubuki Theater. Shouldn't the system be changed?

Unless I have it wrong here, the same group that approves the budget than has to approve the spending of the budget that they approved? That sounds like an old Seinfeld skit (you took the reservation, but you didn't hold the reservation! - You approved the budget, but you didn't approve spending the budget! That's the most important part of a reservation/budget!).

At MegaCorp, yes, spending on an approved budget had to be approved, but those approvals were at a lower level. The highest level approved the overall budget, then the spending controls were delegated.

This just seems like bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy. And the above is totally non-partisan, to be clear - it applies to all.

-ERD50

[cathy63]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff I think the media misses the boat by largely ignoring contractors. I had about 100 Feds working for me and a little over 100 contractors. When we were furloughed I always worried more about my contractors because they were SOL if their employer couldn't cover them during the shutdown. Most of those affected who worked for big tech companies got paid (sometimes working on outside projects) some were just temporarily laid off. I imagine this 5 week shutdown was disastrous for a lot of them.

I was a manager at a small biz government contractor during the 2013 shutdown and lost two good employees as a result of furloughing them without pay for just two weeks. So far this month I've been asked to be a reference for three of my former employees, and I see from LinkedIn and Facebook updates that at least one other has also gotten a new job. I'm sure there are a few more I don't know about yet, and in a strong job market like this, it's awfully hard to hire good people to replace them when you just made everybody go 5 weeks without pay and another shutdown is threatened for 3 weeks from now. Some of the people who are leaving have been working on these systems for many years and a lot of institutional knowledge is walking out the door with them, so restarting projects is not going to be as simple as saying "o.k, everybody back to work".

For the individual employees, during the shutdown they were allowed to use whatever PTO they had, and then they had to go one week with no pay before receiving unemployment, which is at most 50% of their salary. They also had to pay for 100% of their January health insurance premiums (the company usually picks up 80% of the single employee cost). The company has lost about 10% of its expected revenue on those contracts this year, which means there's less money in the profit sharing pot so those payments will be that much smaller when they're handed out in October.

The people I've spoken to don't seem to be in dire straits financially, though they might not tell me if they were, but morale is extremely low. They're really depressed and frustrated and feel betrayed by a government that doesn't honor its contracts.

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 The whole thing sounds like Kubuki Theater. Shouldn't the system be changed? Unless I have it wrong here, the same group that approves the budget than has to approve the spending of the budget that they approved? That sounds like an old Seinfeld skit (you took the reservation, but you didn't hold the reservation! - You approved the budget, but you didn't approve spending the budget! That's the most important part of a reservation/budget!). -ERD50

In the shutdown case the budget has not yet been approved thus the need for action. It could be avoided by an automatic continuing resolution in the event of budget impasse.

Your description does apply to the insane debt ceiling which comes up soon. Congress andalrove the budget and allocate the funds but when the debt ceiling is hit spending stops until Congress raises the ceiling.

[Amethyst]

Employee retention is an issue where I work (part-time, and not for much longer). People with high-quality skills have to accept lower pay, a much higher retirement deduction than just a few years ago, and yet another pay freeze (pay was frozen 3 years in a row before I finally retired). Job security was always the anchor - and now that's becoming a sad joke. The big question is, why do people stay.

[EastWest Gal]

Another looming hardship for those working without pay: at the beginning of the month they were going to start paying the full premiums for dental and vision. It’s not that much, but if they didn’t, they would be dropped from the plan for the rest of the year.

Along with beginning of the month rent or mortgage, and no end in sight, it was getting scary. Air traffic controllers and TSA workers driving for Uber or waiting tables after their shift, more calling in sick because they were too tired to do unpaid work, after doing paid second jobs, and it is flu season so more people ARE sick.

The government stopped paying for some section 8 housing contracts in December. Elderly low income folks were starting to get eviction notices because their landlords were providing housing without pay, which they cannot afford to do.

Let’s hope we’re not here again 3 weeks from now.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff In the shutdown case the budget has not yet been approved thus the need for action. It could be avoided by an automatic continuing resolution in the event of budget impasse. Your description does apply to the insane debt ceiling which comes up soon. Congress andalrove the budget and allocate the funds but when the debt ceiling is hit spending stops until Congress raises the ceiling.

Thanks, yes, it was the debt ceiling I was thinking of. But it is all crazy! Gotta to keep from .


-ERD50

[aaronc879]

Quote:

Originally Posted by njhowie It's bad for the worker if they do not have the savings to cover their living expenses during the period where they aren't receiving a paycheck. Some folks will miss the mortgage or rent payment, others the car payment. Certainly you've seen the stories of government workers at food pantries and soup kitchens. Isn't having to resort to that bad for the worker? https://www.kare11.com/article/news/...7-c73a7cafc014

With the rare exception of a rookie working their first job, they should all have over a month of living expenses saved. Even entry level Government jobs pay more than enough to save such a small amount of money. If they didn't then that's on them. I had over 6 months emergency fund in less than a year after starting my first full time job and I was only making around $10/hr. That was in 2001. That's just over $20K/yr and inflation has been low so it's not more than $30K now I would assume. Nearly all Governement jobs pay more than that.

[njhowie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaronc879 With the rare exception of a rookie working their first job, they should all have over a month of living expenses saved. Even entry level Government jobs pay more than enough to save such a small amount of money. If they didn't then that's on them. I had over 6 months emergency fund in less than a year after starting my first full time job and I was only making around $10/hr. That was in 2001. That's just over $20K/yr and inflation has been low so it's not more than $30K now I would assume. Nearly all Governement jobs pay more than that.

Thanks for your personal opinion.