Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 579 posts

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#141

Post by tstrimple »

Molitor5901 wrote: post #22
bilekas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Critics argue the offer is illegal, there's no real guarantee people will get paid out, and it's something Congress would need to authorize. Give then history of this particular admistration & business', I personally wouldn't be too confident in actually getting paid up to Sept.

[flagged]

In addition to what the others have stated regarding the 2025 budget being locked... Congress also authorized a lot of the things being ransacked right now like USAID. The rule of law seems to offer very little real protections here. So much of the US government is run on precedent and tradition and is incredibly vulnerable (as we're finding out) to folks who give zero fucks about precedent and tradition. Unfortunately the Democratic Party is still completely beholden to those precedents and traditions and have absolutely no clue how to handle opponents who don't.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#142

Post by olalonde »

Shank wrote: post #15

I think the main issue for anyone wanting to take the offer is simply: this was never authorized by congress, so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best. Meanwhile, there's a government funding deadline on March 14, 2025. So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations. It would be an i…

Not American here. Isn't Congress controlled by Republicans? If I understand correctly, it would take 5+ Republicans voting against the party line for a Republican bill to fail to pass? Is this common?

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#143

Post by Jtsummers »

Retric wrote: post #112
aeternum wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the gov will not be funded and you don't believe the gov will honor it's severance agreement why would you believe the employment contract will be honored after March 14?

There’s many examples of government shutdowns where workers received back pay even when they didn’t work those hours. So future administrations are likely to retroactively approve payments if it becomes a political issue. Honestly taking the buyout without an act of congress backing it is likely the more risky here unless you where already planning to leave which is likely why most people took it.

By law they have to be paid for the furloughed time in the case of a shutdown, since 2019. Previously, they were typically paid for that time whether they had to work through the shutdown or not but it was not guaranteed.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12251

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#144

Post by nickff »

dcrazy wrote: post #98
dgfitz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It’s not illegal to pay someone who is frustrated by circumstance in performing the duties of their government job. It’s possibly illegal to pay someone for a government job that doesn’t exist anymore.

I understand your statement in the de facto sense, but I think the position is still legally authorized by Congress, and thus does exist de jure.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#145

Post by tombert »

scarface_74 wrote: post #95
tombert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also suspect that there really isn't nearly as much "waste" here as Musk is alleging, so we are going to be forced to re-hire people, while still paying a ton of workers for 8 months of no work. This doesn't seem "efficient" to me, but "efficient" is a word that doesn't actually mean anything without context, which they don't provide.

Re-hire people for what? They don’t want a functioning government

I suspect that after all these cuts, they're going to realize that some of these things actually are required in order for the American people not to complain too much.

I just remember in Trump's first term, and this is something that has stuck with me since, was how he promised, on day one, to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, only for a few weeks after taking office saying "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated" [1]. It was funny, because pretty much everyone but Donald Trump knew that healthcare could be extremely complicated. The ACA was not repealed, at least not completely, nor was it replaced.

I think a similar thing might happen in a month or two; these departments are going to be cut, there will be lots of delays and complaints and eventually Trump will go out and say "No one knew that these government services were actually necessary". Then they might have to rehire a bunch of the people that left.

That's my hope anyway.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/trump-health-care-co...

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#146

Post by ggreer »

JackYoustra wrote: post #108

Who knows how evenly spread it is? It may be that each service gets better, it may be all services stay the same except for, say, NRO, and we miss a nuclear center being built.

I'm guessing you meant the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not the National Reconnaissance Office. Considering that since the NRC was created in 1975, no nuclear plant license initially submitted to them has begun commercial operations, I think it would be difficult to further impede progress.[1]

I have no clue whether these buyouts will be beneficial or not. It really depends on how government responsibilities are structured. If everything operates under the same rules but there are fewer workers to process everything, then it will hurt economic and technological growth. If, on the other hand, there is a lot of dead weight in these departments, or the rules change to streamline certain processes, then it could be a net improvement. It will probably be years before we have a definitive answer. And as you say, it will probably be different for different parts of the government.

1. Some new nuclear power plants have come online since 1975, but they were all from licenses that were initially submitted to the NRC's predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission. Also the NRC did approve two new nuclear reactors at an existing plant, and those did begin commercial operations 19 years after the license was applied for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#147

Post by hypothesis »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #107
root_axis wrote: post #93

My personal and probably not unique prediction is that these people will be let go and not be paid - same thing he did with twitter.

It is worth looking back at President Musk's previous actions here. I know the twitter engineers sued. Was it ever settled?

It appears most of those claims went to arbitration, so we are unlikely to learn results…

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/most-lawsuit-over-m...

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#148

Post by tstrimple »

justin66 wrote: post #134
neaden wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK so? Do you think the president has to obey the laws? Will the FBI arrest him if they don't? What do you think the consequence will realistically be?

The consequence of those people not being paid is that they'd sue the government as a class, win, and then be paid.

You've clearly not been paying any attention to what has happened to the judicial system in this country. Trump and Elon are both infamous for ripping people off and often getting away with it via the (compromised) court system.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-beats-500-million-se...

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#150

Post by toss1 »

justin66 wrote: post #120
root_axis wrote: post #93

My personal and probably not unique prediction is that these people will be let go and not be paid - same thing he did with twitter.

There are some pretty significant differences between Twitter employees and federal government employees, starting with the fact that a lot of latter group are part of a powerful union.

Sure, but even in a normal situation, all the Union can do is provide greater resources to initiate legal and possibly work actions. Which, in a normal situation might be very effective.

This is NOT anything resembling a normal situation; to treat it as such is merely an exercise in normalcy bias.

Under an authoritarian regime, as is being setup as we type, legal actions are irrelevant as the judicial and legislative branches lose independence and serve the executive. Work actions likely result in the union being decertified and dissolved.

Post reply on HN