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> This decision did not consider the staffing needs of the FAA, which is already challenged by understaffing.
This is an understatement. Staffing issues have been a problem for a while. Six day workweeks for some. Baffling to make cuts to an already understaffed agency.
This is all being executed without thought. The agencies can coast for a while and political pressure can be applied to keep people quiet about problems (Speak up, get fired). Four years from now it becomes someone else’s problem.
I will caveat that these are not air traffic controllers, but rather the technicians that maintain air traffic and airport equipment.
Still, that's not much consolation to me. The system is stretched too far and I don't want to be wondering if there are still enough technicians working to have checked the landing lights for my next flight.
> but rather the technicians that maintain air traffic and airport equipment.
Understaffing maintenance crews for critical aviation systems? What could go wrong?
Yes, it is discomforting, I agree. Just want to make sure folks know who was fired.
It might be better for everyone if they all just quit or go on strike, instead of trying to hold things together. Let the aviation system shut down, and see how popular that is.
yeah, it's surprising none of these unions have done anything like that; you would think that it's the type of measures a union would take when a sizeable percentage of their members is fired for no reason
> rather the technicians that maintain air traffic and airport equipment.
smells like waste to me! critical systems should be designed so as not to require maintenance!! (also, it's clear airport maintenance has been taken over by corrupt and fraudulent Marxists)
/s
I don't think "without thought" is fair.
They know what they're doing.
Ongoing condolences to all the public servants who are being wronged in this ongoing destruction of government.
For what it's worth, people care and sympathize; we just don't know anything that we can do to help.
For context, this is the union for Air Traffic Safety Specialists for the FAA. It appears several hundred of them were let go late last week.
Update: Airway Transportation Systems Specialists, got the acronym wrong. They are technicians who maintain systems across the air traffic control system and airports.
WCPGW?
Safety is not a concern. Nothing is a concern. The administration knows that the system can coast on inertia for a few years before total implosion. Then it is someone else's problem.
Likely by then malicious loyalists will be installed and the billionaire class will have solidified oligarchy so there will be no possibility of consequence anyway.
>> Several hundred employees have been impacted with messages being sent from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address, not an official .gov email address.
Can I register doge_exec_official_genuine_super_real_orders@hotmail.com and start firing government staff too?
Don't worry, SpaceX will fix things:
* https://www.theverge.com/news/614078/faa-air-traffic-control...
No conflicts of interest there!
surely if emails/orders can't be certified as coming from an authoritative source (non .gov) they can be ignored?
The unofficial emails are an absolute disgrace and should be a huge concern to anyone with even a modicum of security sense.
Training the entire government that it’s totally normal to receive official orders from external domains is nightmare fuel for anyone who has had to think about organizational security.
Remember the days when Trump supporters chanted "Lock her up!" because Hillary Clinton used a private email server?
Good times.
Remember: official emails will only come from .gov domains. Oh, and also now @doge.lol.
>Several hundred employees have been impacted with messages being sent from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address, not an official .gov email address
Yes, that is indeed totally strange
worked for the Red Stapler Guy
> Several hundred employees have been impacted with messages being sent from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address, not an official .gov email address.
If I received an email from such an address I would ignore it as a potential phishing attempt. I would think that would be standard practice at government agencies.
> These are not nameless, faceless bureaucrats. They are our family, friends and neighbors. They contribute to our communities.
Every. Single. One. of these firings is a story involving human beings, with families, with ongoing concerns like mortgages, medical problems, deaths in the family, school problems, and all the other things that happen during life. Things many of the DOGE staffers are too young to have experienced yet.
Whatever else you might think about what is going on, the Administration could have done this humanely, carefully, methodically -- but they chose to do it carelessly and cruelly instead. In my opinion, this alone is unforgiveable.
“Things many of the doge staffers are too young to have experienced yet”
This I think pervades the zeitgeist of the moment. Regardless of age, we have fabulously wealthy (mostly men) who have experienced little to no suffering in life. Now they come into power and bring that arrogant attitude you have before life shows you that it owes you nothing.
I used to think “why do I pay school taxes” when I bought my first house, before I had kids.
I used to think “why does anyone need help” before I lost my house to a forced short sale.
I used to think “who cares about healthcare” and then my wife almost died of sepsis contracted through surgery for breast cancer.
Too many people in charge have zero empathy because their lived experience is becoming fabulously wealthy and pretty much nothing else. No wonder we are living in a terrible timeline.
> who have experienced little to no suffering in life
Money is basically coupons that let you tell someone else to do something instead of you doing it.
Is all suffering in life removable by telling other people to do things? I don’t think so. Certainly some things, but probably not even a majority, let alone all.
In fact I think a common pattern is where someone chases money for years, gets it, and then realizes it doesn’t actually solve most of their problems.
I take it you’re not american?
This is how the US works: at will employment: one day you have a job, the next you don’t.
Not all states have at will employment. And government employees in particular are typically protected from "at will" and instead should be fired for cause.
That's why gov jobs offer greater job security, while paying less than in the private sector.
It's how about 2/3rds of the US works.
About 1/3rd of Americans have an employment arrangement which requires just cause or other factor which makes it not at will employment.
public jobs historically have had the most protections against mass firings. It weights in on the calculus to take a lower paid job in public sector in exchange for very high stability.
The sympathy for an insanely bloated bureaucracy that has put generations into massive tax debt is baffling to say the least.
If I sued everytime I got laid off and posted a bunch of wahmbulance crap on linkedin I would never get hired again.
Didn't they offer some sort of buyout severance deal?
Probationary employees are fired afaik without any severance, as they are not yet covered by worker protections.
Even those who do accept the “buyout” may be unpleasantly surprised in March with the looming government shutdown and corresponding lapse in appropriations.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-firing-probation-workforce-...
The deal says that if they have no legal standing to make any challenges once signing. If they decide to not pay them, they have signed away any legal remedy
Only if you believe a non-official email that involves signing away all legal rights to any recourse you might take against them both before and after leaving, which includes your severance pay which nobody has authorized or found a source for.
Just hack and slash, what could possibly go wrong?
But I get the feeling that chaos is the point.
It's supposed to go wrong. Government isn't worth anything. Once they "prove" had bad it is, they will bring in corporations that will do it, and they will be able to do it for a profit without having to deal with all those pesky rules that keep us safe.
> Several hundred employees have been impacted with messages being sent from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address, not an official .gov email address.
Shit, coulda just used a @gmail.com address at that point.
Or a cocaine.ninja or national.shitposting.agency address
@doge.lol
All these fired employees were hired in the last year. How much of our government is new like that?
These don't just include new hires but also people who switched to their job recently. It is not uncommon in the government to switch jobs.
The avg monthly gains of government workers in 2024 was +38,000.
Does that include losses or not? Turnover in the FAA is probably really bad.