I recently read about Republican lawmaker Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, creating a bill, the 2010 Federal Workforce Reduction Act (H.R. 5348). Interesting to say the least, considering the House recently agreed not to freeze federal pay.
Why would there be a need? Consider the following federal employment statistics:
- The US job numbers for May showed that of the 431,000 jobs created, 411,000 of them (95%!) were federal jobs related to the census.
- Since 2008, the federal civilian workforce has grown by 188,000 (15%!)
Can’t say the same is true for the public sector, or state, county, local government — we’ve all seen the news headlines and television reports!
If the bill passes as currently written, here’s what would happen:
- Government could hire one employee for every two that leave (with exceptions for the Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affair departments.
- The president would establish a federal hiring pool (fluctuating due to the number of employees leaving federal service/retiring)
- Agenices would compete for the ability to hire new employees, and have to submit a request to the president to hire from the pool – essentially justifying all new hires.
- Disclosure of all new hires (by agency) to the public and Congress on a regular basis.
What are your thoughts on all this?
Bogus and as it stands will never happen. You think the hiring process is slow now? Wait until it clears all the way up and including the president of the UNITED STATES!! It’s kinda funny what bills state sometimes (or always). We are already visiting hiring freezes now- within DOD. so there are some truths above but as always, I’d like to see what actually gets passed. There was a proposal last year for feds to recieve maternity/paternity PAID leave in conjunction with signing a service agreement– that went no where. So we’ll see