USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them
USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is now trying to rehire them
The incompetence is palpable. They would be far more nefarious if they weren't tripping over their own balls all the time.
I hope these people renegotiate a good contract.
They would be far more nefarious if they weren't tripping over their own balls all the time.
Fear not! These foibles will all be iterated away during Trump's third term. Practice makes perfect!
They’re still nefarious if they are incompetent. See: Fascist Italy.
How do you accidentally sack someone?
You have to specifically choose a person, presumably with an actual reason for sacking them, then reach out to them specifically to inform them of their sacking.
In my country you also require a valid reason for doing so, you can't just randomly sack someone, I imagine in this case it would be being made redundant.
So, you decide your staff are no longer required and if their contract allows you to let them go (or you just pay the big severance or whatever), okay cool.
Then you.... change your mind? What?
That'd be a deeply incompetent employer. Like, buffoon levels. I wouldn't go back to working for someone like that. If nothing else, they've shown how little they care about their staff. Not worth it.
The morons fired every federal employee who was classified as "probationary", in multiple departments. This is all employees with less than 90 days in their current role, but because these idiots don't know anything about anything, they assumed it meant new hires only.
Others have pointed out that the US largely practices "at will" employment (IIRC, only one state doesn't), and that's true, but government workers do tend to have stronger protections than private sector workers. But probationary status is a whole other can of worms.
Elon Musk has a consistent pattern of doing exactly this over and over.
It's about the 6th separate incident in gov I've heard of in the last few weeks.
Not just Elon. It's the hedge fund playbook. Aquire a company, strip it for parts, collect profit, move on to the next business.
The Federal government is being liquidated as a going concern. Elon is leading the charge because he's the most successful in his field.
In my country you also require a valid reason for doing so, you can't just randomly sack someone
In the US you can be fired at any time for any reason (or no reason), including "I'm having a bad day and I don't like you." Randomly sacking people is Trump's thing, he had a show about it and everything.
The federal government actually does have protections for people who are not in the probationary period, which is why they only fired people in the probationary period, because if they tried to fire tenured employees they'd have a much bigger fight. But that probationary period can last from 1 to 2 years, and also kicks in again for anyone who starts in a new position.
Which is why anti-discrimination laws are entirely toothless. “I didn’t fire you because you are black/female/Muslim, I fired you because I stubbed my toe on the way into the office!”
Like, unless they put into text “we fired this person because X,” you’re never getting any form of justice.
I watched my manager at a shitty fast food job toss a black guy’s application - “because the last one caused problems.” Unless you get enough people to to testify it’s a pattern - enough people willing to risk their jobs for justice that likely won’t happen - there’s nothing for it. Fuck, I lost my last job pretty much immediately after bringing up some Title 9 violations and asking for some accommodations for a medical condition - the retaliation is obvious but not enough to make a lawyer happy.
I guess in federal spaces, there are technically more protections, but we aren’t operating under the rule of law right now. Rules only exist if they are enforced.
Likely the kind of people working for the government on things like bird flu are, at least in part, doing it for the greater good, rather than exclusively personal benefit (i.e. pay, status or even stability). That kind of person might be more willing to work for a perceived bad employer than you or I, since that employer - for the time being, anyway - is likely to have more reach (for information or material dispensation) than most any other entity.
edit: Also, even if they are motivated purely by personal benefit, this seems like it would put them in a pretty strong negotiating position. They could use the situation to get themselves a cushy contract while finding something more reliable.
These are the same people who argue you can "accidentally" have sex with someone, it's not rape!
How many times does the US administration have to repeat it for it to stop being an accident.
They've done this with the national nuclear stockpile also: fire nearly everyone and try to figure out who they need based on what they broke.
They weren’t accidentally fired. That asshole with no brains who calls himself a president king made yet another dumb choice.
He calls himself king now. You got to keep up
Yes you’re correct. I’ll update. :)
If it was such a blunder, perhaps everyone in management that mindlessly approved the firing should be fired.
They just got a rise.
This is going to be bad.
I’m in some homesteading/backyard chicken groups, and they are already gearing up some disturbing conspiracy narratives. “Bird flu” isn’t real, and it’s a ploy by the globalists to kill off poultry to force us to EAT ZE BUGS and fake meat. There will be people who will be ready to revolt against any action taken to prevent or control the outbreak.
The same types are also pushing raw milk.
We are going to have another pandemic, with an administration that is actively hostile to public health and already has a track record of exacerbating this previous one - responsible for the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is intentional as part of the accelerationist project to break down the US into micro fiefdoms.
If you think that's bad you don't want to know what they put inside the fake meat. Let's just say that it's not a coincidence that there are now more genders. /s
Can you imagine how much baying and howling with rage Fox News and all the other right-wing outlets would be doing if this happened on a Democrat president's watch? And the subsequent screaming many GOP voters would be doing?
It's not hard to imagine, because they routinely freaked out about stuff much more trivial than this. (Remember Obama's white suit?)
Why aren't there a Fox news for the Democrat?
Because democrats don't fall for it nearly as much.
Seriously. The people that ran the right wing outrage pages before 2020 tried similar left wing outrage pages, and they didn't go anywhere.
Were these more of the people getting the letters saying they are being terminated for performance issues, despite glowing performance reviews? Who wants to go back after that, knowing it can happen again with zero predictability?
Well maybe we will have less taxes?
(Highly unlikely)
Here, have some tariffs
It’s times like this that I see another flaw with time travel.
People of the past would never believe these ridiculous stories.
I expect all Amtrak trains will be running on time very soon.
They should ask for a hella big raise and job guarantees or else they should walk.
I'm surprised they even want to admit that it's real
You see, unlike COVID, this kills things with value, factory chickens.
Ah, that makes sense
Move fast and create pandemics
I remember when the China, France, a Latin American consortium... even Cuban released their versions of the COVID vaccine, and US officials fell all over one another insisting they didn't work.
I wonder how the US will respond if we lack any kind of for-profit answer to another pandemic. Will our demolition of the FDA mean we can acquire medication abroad? Or will the US crack down on vaccine tourism out of paranoia?
Seems like the US might abandon even the pretense of being a global pharmaceutical leader in the rush to return to its quack roots.
It's almost like they rushed the decision and are incompetent.