UNITED STATES
The longest shutdown of the US Public Service is over for now, but one leading commentator says the 35-day closure may have done irreparable damage to the country’s bureaucracy.
Writing in the Pacific Standard magazine, Contributing Editor, Jared Keller said for those individuals who actually bore the brunt of the shutdown, the damages incurred could last a lifetime.
The dispute between President, Donald Trump and Congress left more than 800,000 Federal workers and nearly one million Federal contractors either out of work or working without pay.
“As the fiasco wore on, and stories began piling up of disgruntled Federal employees forced to turn to soup kitchens and family for meals, some bureaucrats were finally forced to act,” Mr Keller wrote.
“It was Transportation Security Administration agents and air traffic controllers taking ‘sick-outs’ at major airports that immediately precipitated a deal to end the shutdown.”
He said experience was likely to mean that a sizeable number of Government workers would actively look for new jobs.
“And that would mean the Federal Government would lose a significant amount of institutional memory from employees who don’t want a workplace that treats their pay so haphazardly,” Mr Keller wrote.
He said the exodus was already under way before the shutdown.
“Government reports reveal that the Federal Government has experienced higher turnover rates since Trump came into office,” Mr Keller wrote.
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Government saw 468,000 employee exits in 2017, more than [in] any of the previous four years.”
He said this could be partly put down to an “ideological mismatch” between the Trump Administration and some of its core Departments, coupled with Mr Trump’s willingness to freeze workers’ pay.
Washington, DC, 30 January 2019
