Furloughed workers and no second jobs

[Slash1972]

@CookingWithGas

No. The numbers are 380,000 furloughed and about 420,000 working with no pay. These are federal employees only.

The number of contractors who are furloughed and laid off is much higher.

That’s what I thought, thanks. It would be nice if the news mentioned “Also there are hundreds of thousands of contractors not working as well”

[Machine_Elf]

The Code of Federal Regulations is a gigantic list of all of the laws and rules that are passed by Congress and all the other federal agencies. 5 CFR Part 2635, Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, includes a whole bunch of rules explaining what is expected of federal employees. The relevant part is §2635.803, Prior approval for outside employment and activities:

@The Federal Government

When required by agency supplemental regulation issued after February 3, 1993, an employee shall obtain prior approval before engaging in outside employment or activities. Where it is determined to be necessary or desirable for the purpose of administering its ethics program, an agency shall, by supplemental regulation, require employees or any category of employees to obtain prior approval before engaging in specific types of outside activities, including outside employment.

I’ve been through this process for my outside employment. It involved submitted a document to my designated ethics official explaining the nature of the activity, the amount of time and money involved, the name of the person/organization for whom work would be done, number of clients, and so on. It also required me to certify that I would not use any official duty time or government property, resources, or facilities not available to the general public. After a review by the DEO and an agency official about three levels up from me, I got the green light to proceed.

Generally speaking, outside employment isn’t a problem, but they need to review on a case-by-case basis to make sure no conflicts of interest (real or apparent) would arise. A few examples:

-many federal agencies engage in regulatory activity. If an employee is involved in making decisions regarding regulations/enforcement, they’re not going to be approved for outside employment with any company that’s subject to such regulations.

-many federal employees are involved in managing contractors, or making decisions about the merits of competing contract bids. Such federal employees are not going to be approved for outside employment with such contractors.

The catch of course is that you officially need prior approval, and it’s not a blanket approval, it’s done on a case-by-case basis. If you didn’t get prior approval for specific outside employment before the shutdown, then you’re officially screwed, since the people who would issue that approval are out of the office for the duration. If you’re driving for Uber or delivering pizzas to avoid defaulting on your mortgage during the shutdown, it’s not likely to come back to bite you in the ass, but if it fits into one of the above ethically questionable categories, you might find yourself in hot water at a later date.