In the opinion of one person who has a grand total of zero minutes of experience of all US Gov. employees being offered resignation leters.
The GP comment was about accident investigators rather than air traffic controllers but the consquences are the same, a lot of regular gov. employees are distracted by a current situation with no prior occurrence.
That had always been the case. The new administration has already done a lot of things differently from previous administrations.
It was largely a matter of precedent, rather than law. It's unclear how much of the current path is legal. And, of course, whether it's good judgment is completely orthogonal to whether it's legal.
FAA-employed ATCs are like any other non-appointed federal employees - politics should have no impact on their employment and this arrangement is protected by federal civil service laws.
Which Trump is roundly ignoring because he wants to appoint every agency with burrowed MAGA loyalists, top to bottom.
If you haven't been following what this administration has said and done with a painful degree of critical focus, it's probably bleaker than you imagine.
> FAA-employed ATCs are like any other non-appointed federal employees - politics should have no impact on their employment and this arrangement is protected by federal civil service laws.
"Trump reclassifies thousands of federal employees, making them easier to fire":
> The federal civil service system exists to ensure that hiring and firing decisions are based on merit, not political favoritism. Legal and procedural standards, enforced by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, require managers to provide a reason for taking disciplinary action, give employees the right to respond and mandate that decision-makers consider both sides before taking action against a federal employee. This system is crucial for maintaining fairness; it prevents arbitrary and unjust terminations.
> Before this system was established, many new administrations fired their predecessors’ civil servants and replaced them with donors and cronies. This practice led to instability and inefficiency within the federal government. To address this issue, Congress established merit-based hiring and firing procedures that apply to civil servants who are not political appointees, ensuring that government agencies are staffed with qualified individuals who can effectively serve the public.
wasn't the situation then that the air traffic controllers walked off on strike, so new replacements had to be made to keep planes flying, which was realized by firings? (i was pretty young then, but that's what i remember reading)
IIRC, rather then negotiate with the experienced union controllers until an agreement was made - they brought in inexperienced non-union controllers..
source: my uncle was an ATC during the strike. I believe he was a shift lead/supervisor and was NOT part of the walk out. He was appalled at how bad the replacements were and was going crazy trying to get them up to snuff.
