End of the hiring freeze. Then what?

If all goes according to plan, the current semi-solid federal hiring freeze will end on or about April 21. That’s the Friday before Earth Day. While that’s not yet a federal holiday, the end of the freeze could prompt dancing in some cubicles by feds whose workloads are up as they handle chores once done by departed colleagues — jobs that have been vacant since the post-inauguration freeze.

While not a “hard” freeze — tens of thousands of jobs were exempt from it — agencies were told that as of high noon (EST) Jan. 22, they could not fill existing vacant positions (except those that were exempted), nor could they make any new job offers or create new positions — with some exceptions. Big chunks of the government devoted to national security and defense, health and law enforcement were (as per usual) exempt from the hiring freeze. Federal News Radio yesterday reported that the Air Force had managed to exempt 54,000 civilian jobs as of mid-March.

But in some offices, the freeze is being felt. It is very, very real, although the impact is hard to measure.

Unlike previous hiring freezes imposed by incoming presidents, the Trump freeze gave some wiggle room for job candidates who got a bona fide job offer before the Jan. 22, that it was confirmed by the hiring agency and that their start date was on or before Feb. 22. That helped thousands of wannabe feds in the job pipeline. In some earlier hiring freeze actions, people who had been promised, confirmed and accepted for employment couldn’t and were not hired during the freeze period. For more, click here.

The freeze was imposed for roughly 90 days in order to give the Office of Management and Budget’s new team time to develop a long-term plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Originally that drawdown was to be accomplished by attrition, but later the director of OMB, Mick Mulvaney, told the Washington Post he didn’t see how RIFs (reductions-in-force) could be avoided. That caused OMB and OPM to issue, or revise and reissue, regulations and reminders about how to handle furloughs, and RIFs.

RIFs are tricky, complicated and can be very costly. Workers with seniority and veterans preference (often higher-paid people) who are RIFed can bump shorter-service workers. People who are actually put out the door may have to be paid severance, which is often costlier than the $25,000 buyouts available in most agencies ($40,000 at Defense), but which have been little used since the Great Clinton downsizing of the 1990s.

People who hoped for a painless downsizing this time counted on federal retirements to jump after the election, and especially in December, January and February. But in fact, fewer workers than usual retired in each of those months, perhaps because of uncertainty in the non-federal job market.

So how bad is it where you work? Are you doing double duty? Are things moving slower than usual? Or are they moving at all? How’s morale?

Nearly Useless Factoid

By David Thornton

Earth Day is the largest civic observance in the world, with more than 1 billion people participating internationally.

Source: Earthday.org

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