Historic…what?

Lawmakers unveil details of ‘historic’ federal paid parental leave benefits | Federal News Network

The annual defense policy bill, if passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by the president, would grant federal employees up to 12 weeks of paid leave for the birth, adoption or foster of a new child.

If you live in the United States, and you are an employee of the United States Federal Government, and you are planning to have a family, this is a wonderful benefit, assuming the bill is actually passed, which with this current government, is doubtful. However, to call it historic, or even wonderful, falls well short of the mark.

Other backslapping terms cited in the article include watershed, life-changing, and monumental. If the bill passes, this will go into effect in October of 2020, more than a year from now. Please make a note of that in your family planning.

Why am I so contemptuous of this policy? For starters, this only applies to employees of the Federal Government. Without a calculator, I cannot accurately estimate the impact. Still, the number of people that this will benefit is a fraction of a percent of the overall workforce in the United States when you consider those of childbearing or family starting years and those who are actual Federal Employees. This does not cover contractors or anyone else that toils for a paycheque in the United States.

I am also derisive of this policy because it still falls considerably short of the policies for other First World/Developed nations around the world. According to the United Nations, of 193 countries, only a handful do not have any national paid parental leave law. Guess who they are? New Guinea, a few South Pacific island nations and the United States. The Federal law would align the benefit for Federal Employees with the basic minimums that are already prevalent in the world, which means we are not on par with countries like Sudan (oh, wait, never mind, everyone in Sudan gets 13 weeks).

Most of the developed nations start at 26 weeks and go up from there, with a guarantee that your job will still be there should you decide to return. Let me say that again. If you go on maternity leave, most policies guarantee that the employee will have a job when they return from their leave. It is not clear that such a guarantee is in this bill. I will need to check that, but I would hope it is. Of course, this bill was supposed to be a larger bill that also provided for the care of sick family members, a growing problem in the United States as the cost of health care skyrockets, and the population is aging at a rapid rate. That is still a significant hurdle that many people, not just Federal Employees, need to overcome on a daily basis.

I congratulate the Federal Government. An organization that has been the whipping boy of both the President and Congress, where hiring the best and the brightest has never been easy, now has a benefit worth writing home about. If the bill gets passed. And signed. And not watered down in committee, and any of a dozen other things that could happen before October of next year. Now, what about the rest of the population?

I Hope We Got A Good Price For It

Twitter erupts over Trump claim that the moon 'is a part' of Mars

While it is clear 45 mis-spoke, it is not the first time he has said something that is so bizarre as to make many Bushisms (Bush II) seem like logical, well thought out arguments, the truth of the matter is that 45 just is not articulate. And that is being polite about it.

Put aside for the moment that the United States does not have the scientific will to return to the Moon, much less stage a mission to Mars, it does not have the political will to do so. With so many tangible problems on this planet, I can appreciate not funding a lunar mission. However, if funding a lunar mission kickstarts scientific funding for other, viable projects on Earth, then let’s go back to the Moon!

Otherwise, I hope Marvin gave us a good price.

The Realities of Contract Work

About three months after the longest government shutdown in history came to an end, leaders of companies and unions representing federal contract workers are speaking out, asking for legislative changes to ensure that their employees are guaranteed back pay if another shutdown occurs. WTOP

The latest Federal Government shutdown lasted thirty-five days and affected eight hundred thousand contractors, everyone from the men and women that empty the trash, to the men and women that write the software that fly the unmanned aircraft used by the military.

I ask that we work together to find a way to enact legislation that will treat the contractor workforce just as their federal workforce counterparts are treated —Leidos CEO Roger Krone.

Mr. Krone’s supposed concern for his employees notwithstanding, this is about the money Leidos and other federal contractors lost during the shutdown. Let me explain how it works. A contractor is a body with a value attached to it. That value is a combination of their salary, their benefits, and a number of other factors at play within the company that is loaning their services to the Federal Government. What is called the loaded rate. That loaded rate would astound you (or perhaps not - that $10,000 toilet seat. That was as much the cost of labour as the cost of materials). If I am employed at an annual salary of $130,000, I would be making about $60/hour. Now, we add to that the overhead costs, etc from the company and I am being sold to them at a rate of $120/hr.

This is about the money, and not the money lost by the contractors.

The argument or at least the parallel is that the Federal Employees got their money, the contractors should too. I am of two minds about this. I can see the argument that the Federal workforce was involuntarily furloughed. In labour law, it is slightly different from being laid-off, but the effects are the same. If Ford had furloughed a line, those employees would not be paid for their time off. Similarly, the contractors would not be paid.

Companies are often left with two choices during a shutdown, he said: pay their employees and go out of business, or withhold pay and see their workforce leave them.

He is correct. Contractors actually live on a very small margin with Federal contracts. And they do have a significant risk that their employees will walk out on them if they are not paid. And that is the risk of contracting in general. You take a job with a contractor knowing that at some point your contract will expire. Some companies recognize this, make allowances for it, and protect their employees, to a certain extent, while others are less concerned. In fairness to Leidos, they tend to protect their employees, but they have lost their margin over the thirty-five days, through no fault of their own because the government (the paymaster) was not doing their job.

How this compensation should be addressed is not a simple issue. Being paid to not work is not going to be successful. And 800,000 federal contractors did not work for thirty-five days. Unlike Federal Employees, contractors had the option of looking for work or taking unemployment, or annual training or leave. I am not sure contractors should expect back pay. But as a former Federal contractor, I can feel their pain. There is no easy solution.

Greatest Opportunity of All Time

An open letter to all recruiters, past, present, and future. If you are serious about attracting top talent into hard to fill positions, you need to put as much effort into finding us as we put into finding our positions. It is not enough to have a catchy title, that title actually has to be meaningful. Most of us have been in the industry more than ten minutes so a headline like this is meaningless.

Greatest Opportunity Of All Time!

Even if it really is our dream opportunity, most of us will ignore an email with that title as junk because it means you have not done your homework.

Hello! I am a Sr. Technical Recruiter from an IT Staffing Firm, 1. I am reaching out in regards to possible job opportunities that we have in the area that match up very well with your profile. You have an excellent background and I know we can find the next best opportunity for you!

Again, I am skeptical. You did a keyword search, that’s good, but do I really match up? How?

We have a DevOps Lead specializing in Azure technologies in the Washington, DC area supporting the Federal Agnecy. US Citizens Required

Ah, you did not even do a keyword search. If you had, you would have discovered that I have zero experience with Azure, and I have never worked at the agency you are sourcing, and the law of averages says you should have hit my agencies, although I have neutered my profile and taken the agencies I have supported out of it.

If you are finding it hard to attract top talent, then perhaps you should review the tactics you are using to get their attention.

  1. I have removed all incriminating names to protect the guilty, but I get several of these a week with the same template.

Barn Door, Meet Horse

Trump Organization to use E-Verify for worker status checks | WTOP

“We are actively engaged in uniforming this process across our properties and will institute E-verify at any property not currently utilizing this system,” Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said in a statement provided to The Associated Press. “As a company we take this obligation very seriously and when faced with a situation in which an employee has presented false and fraudulent documentation, we will take appropriate action.”

One has to wonder, once the Trump Organization has resolved the situation if they will return to hiring falsely documented personnel or actually hire properly documented personnel. If there is another round of bankruptcies, we will know what they chose. And then how they returned to the old way of doing things.

A Legitimate Reason?

OPM: Unpaid essential personnel must show up or risk AWOL status | WTOP

If an employee has a legitimate reason for the absence, the agency could place the person on furlough, but AWOL employees can face appropriate consequences based on the discretion of the agency.

Gee, what could a federal employee use as a legitimate reason for not reporting to work, when they are being ordered to report and not actually getting paid for coming to work. Hm, let me think, let me think. Oh, I know! How about Amendment 13, Section 1 of the United States Constitution?

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

I guess being essential, working without pay, for the United States Government, in the event of a shutdown is…punishment for a crime?

Failing that, not being able to pay for gas, or transit is also something I would accept. After all, many TSA worksites are not exactly conveniently located to public transit.

And The Stupidity Keeps Coming.

Trump says solution to shutdown impasse ‘so simple’ | WTOP

“I’m not looking to call a national emergency,” Trump said Monday. “This is so simple we shouldn’t have to.”

The President is correct. The solution is quite simple. The Senate needs to vote on the bills already passed by the house. That means the Majority Leader needs to man up and bring them to the floor. Let them stand or fall on their own merit and let the President sign or veto them as he wishes. This will show the country who is really causing 800,000 Federal workers to miss paycheques, put their credit history at risk, and, according to the Bureau of Revenue of Maryland:

The state’s Bureau of Revenue Estimates said Monday in a report that each biweekly payroll those residents are not paid results in about $778 million in lost wages. That results in roughly $57.5 million less in combined state and local income tax withholding and $2.1 million less in sales tax collections. WTOP

And that is just one state’s lost taxes.

Yes, Mr. President, the solution is so simple.

Can We Do The Same For Pastrami and Bacon?

Industry wary of alternatives tries to protect a word: meat | WTOP

Nebraska lawmakers will consider a bill this year defining meat as “any edible portion of any livestock or poultry, carcass, or part thereof” and excluding “lab-grown or insect or plant-based food products.” It would make it a crime to advertise or sell something “as meat that is not derived from poultry or livestock.”

As more and more marketing people try to get the general public to fall for their new and improved usually faux healthy product, like nut water, or margarine, instead of milk, or butter, the blurring of the lines between what we know it is and what the marketing doublespeak wants us to believe it is will only get broader.

Even foods that should be clearly delineated, like bacon, seem to now come with qualifiers, and the qualifiers are rather odd. I have yet to encounter the full shift I have seen with coffee (you now have to explicitly say you want your coffee hot), but I do not think we are far away. When I order pastrami, being asked to define whether I want beef or turkey probably makes several in the smoked meat business cringe. Bacon now comes as pork (the so far default), turkey, or tofu (when you are eating something called tofu, bacon is the last thing that comes to mind).

Many people have decided to cut meat out of their diet. That is just fine. However, please, do not confuse your need to follow rabid diet models with the public's need to be able to identify their food. Meat only comes from animals, milk from cows or goats, and keep your ground up nuts out of my water. I need them for my Chex Mix.

The Party of No

House passes bill that would end shutdown, but Senate unlikely to take up

By a vote of 240-188 along mostly partisan lines, the House passed the bill and sent it to the Republican-controlled Senate as part of Democrats' latest strategy to end partial government shutdowns at many federal agencies that began on Dec. 22. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not indicated a willingness to bring the bill up for a vote.

For the last two years, the House, Senate, and Executive have been controlled by the Republicans. For the past two years, the party of No has had control of all aspects of the government. During that time, they have not passed any significant bills related to border security. Now, suddenly, at the eleventh hour, the party of No suddenly needs to pass a bill containing $5bn for a wall. It no longer matters what this wall is made of anymore. $5bn is just the entry, like a gateway drug. And this is such an important issue, that the party of No has decided to shut down the government and not reopen it.

Let me be clear. The bills that are being passed are identical to the proposals the Republican-controlled Senate passed which did not have the $5bn in it anyway. Now, suddenly, the House bills are not good enough, and the Party of No in the Senate is refusing to bring them to the floor. Why?

The answer is pretty simple. The Republican-controlled Senate is afraid that if they bring these bills to the floor, the Senate will pass them, at a veto-proof level, and Majority Leader McConnell will look like an ass. This is now beyond the temper tantrums the President is throwing. This is a full-blown ass-covering exercise. And 800,000 federal workers are being held over a barrel because of it.