When the housing bubble popped, I went through two years with 18 furlough days each a couple of years ago. I was lucky compared to many. We lost 33% of our positions including folks who were way up there in seniority. And this was AFTER a whole bunch accepted a generous early retirement offer. I’m not sure I’d still be here if two of my immediate coworkers hadn’t gotten themselves fired for other stuff first. It’s been five years since we had a raise or COLA. And it hasn’t let up yet.
My brother is a DoD employee for the Navy and will be effected.
I have no idea yet what the impact will be to my part time National Guard job.
Another Federal contractor here, although not DoD. We know that at least one of our projects will be taking a hit, but we aren’t sure about others. The “good” news is that we’ve been understaffed for a while, so even if several of our projects are reduced or cancelled, we should have enough work to go around.
DA Civilian here in Europe (Germany) and we’re facing what a lot of you have mentioned. Two days unpaid leave per pay period. Temp and Term employees are getting the axe. Oddly local national employees are exempted so they’ll continue working unaffected.
I suspect my organization will space everyone out so everyone gets a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, etc. ensuring coverage in the office but who knows …
The military people I work with are talking about how a lot of the ‘services’ (mail, dining facility, gate guards) may, during this time, be performed by the Soldiers.
Interesting times …
My sister is a federal contractor up in DC and she just told me that her T4 contract is funded for another 4 years. So she’s good up until then.
I just heard from one of our project leads about the potential furloughs. We are contractors. At a meeting one of the government employees said that they were going to close the doors to the offices on a furlough day. However our contract is for 40 hours a week over the course of 5 days. If they close the doors, our people will still get paid for not working. They discussed going to 4-10 hour days, but the government employees only work 8 hours and aren’t going to babysit us for the extra two hours a day! What a mess.
Are you sure about that? The contractors we have around here would not be able to come to work and they wouldn’t get paid either. They’ve been saying that a lot of contracts would be modified as well.
We have a third meeting in a little bit. I’m sure not much has changed.
There are various contract vehicles so it may be unique to our type of contract. As far as modifying the contract, unless the contract allows that, the company contracted can say No. Of course that might make renewing said contract difficult in the future.
I also work for SSA, and we haven’t heard anything. No plans, no contingencies, nada. I work in a regional office, as opposed to a field office, so there are no delusions of “Mission Essential-ness” here.
Air traffic controller here. Preparations are being made for one furlough day per pay period, across the board, across the country. As you said, we haven’t gotten official 30- day notices yet, so if it happens, it’s sometime in April.
It’s going to hurt us at our facility, because we are short-staffed anyway, but we’re not already using mandatory overtime like some bigger places. It would be just like the government to furlough controllers for a day, then be forced to use overtime to keep the facility running.
The FAA just came out today with a list of airports that could see their control towers either shut down overnight or close completely if sequestration goes through. I have doubts shutting down towers will be a first, second or third option, but the list is an attempt to put some pressure on Congress. Would you like to be the congressperson in office when your airport lost its control tower, thanks to you throwing a financial hissy fit?
I think the biggest impact for the flying public is going to be TSA inspectors. Flight delays happen now, due to weather (they’ll now be more widespread due to staffing) but fewer TSA agents are going to mean some loooooooong waits in security lines.
We had our third meeting this week and I saw the list of towers shutting down. We were told that if it happens it would start the 7th of April. We were also told that a lot of the NAVAIDS might not be repaired very fast and there might not be enough parts as well.
I do wonder how bad it will be in the larger areas like DC, New York and Chicago. And of course I do happen to have a trip on the 8th. I’ll just make sure I get there early I guess.
Ah yes. I work at ODAR, so I’m banking on the fact that cancelling boatloads of hearings would be a logistical nightmare for all parties involved. We’ll see.
As I understand it, ALJs have to “pick up the slack” when their support staff is furloughed. That’ll go over really well. :rolleyes:
Toss me a PM if you ever hear anything. Everyone here is almost shockingly quiet about it. I’m thinking that people here assume we have some sort of immunity, but I would not bank on that to be sure.
DoD contractor. I’m hearing different things from different sources about what will happen to us.
The company I work for has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, and most of their projects are pre-funded through the end of fiscal 2013 (according to them, “We do not anticipate major changes to operations in the months ahead.”)
However, the agency I work for has told us everyone, contractors included, will be affected. The reason I’m given for this is that we are “cross-billed employees,” meaning each pay period my company invoices the agency and then the agency pays out of their budget, and that’s how we are paid. Seems like a silly system to me, but unfortunately I am merely a servant of the contract.
Oh, and because my GF works for the USDA and will also be affected, we can look forward to lovely ramen meals every day for possibly the rest of the year. Awesome. 
I used to be a senior attorney for HUD for 5 years and still keep in contact with many of my old co-workers, though mostly from the non-legal departments. From FB postings from my co-workers and law school classmates working at other agencies, it seems that most have been issued impending furlough notices, though I’m not sure about OGC vs. the program officers.
Makes me really happy that I quit a) law and b) the Feds.
I wouldn’t doubt that it has been awarded for 4 more years.
I would doubt that it was FUNDED for 4 years.
Just received pretty much official notification from the very top person in our Command that furlough, 22 days/176 hours is going to occur.
Now, we have to receive written notification and it should occur sometime mid March.
What really bites is that I cannot take any vacation this year because any days off are to be unpaid. I can’t afford to take weeks of unpaid leave. That just sucks because I really need a break, damn it.
My daughter is getting married in July and I need some time off to be able help with set up, planning, and the actual wedding itself.
I was planning on my annual trip to Kauai, but that isn’t happening either.
Finally, a $1200 a month pay cut really hurts.
Well I’m sure I will hear from her VERY quickly if anything goes amiss and she gets any furlough tossed onto her.
ETA, when I was furloughed, I wrote down how much money I was losing altogether and used it as an incentive for saving money. Every cent that I saved above and beyond my normal retirement program got checked off against this total until I had it completely mitigated.
I am writing the following for informational purposes only. I am NOT trying to tell anyone they should not be upset about what is happening, or any other criticism. I am only relating it so you can read about what happened to myself and my coworkers.
I work in the private sector. Our parent company four years ago was tightening it’s belts. Many employees were being asked to take furloughs. Because I am a member of a union, they did not have the right to furlough us. Instead (we were in negotiations) we were offered either a permanent pay cut (equalling about 17% in my case) or layoffs of unit members. We chose the pay cut (to protect our members) though they did lay off some folks anyway later.
We wanted furloughs! If I was going to lose money, I wanted time off, and besides, four years later I am still out a lot of money (though slightly less; I did get a couple small bumps since).
It did contribute greatly to the loss of my house (with other significant factors).
I repeat, I am NOT trying to say “you should stop whining” or anything like that. What I am saying is it sucks, mightily.
Taters - that really sucks.
No official word around here - just an email from the CEO last week explaining what might happen as he best understood it. I’m going under the assumption that I’ll be out of work soon. If I can stay on, that’s great, but if I get sequestered out the door, well, spring is coming and there’s a lot to do in my yard. And with judicious transplanting, I don’t even need to buy new plants - I can stretch what I have, so there’s that.
And it’s not like I have any control over the situation, so I’m just trying to be all zen and stuff…