Hiring Freezes?? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Why would you want to work for the trump administration? Honestly curious. Art III is one thing and probably safe and surely it varies by department, but a political branch could be implicating by association.

It's a bit of a stretch to say everyone who works for the federal government is working for the Trump Administration. Nobody is going to be implicated.

Disagree. DOJ certainly will be now under Sessions. The things he's gonna make DOJ do will cross constitutional lines. Remember this is a guy who doesn't believe the voting rights act is good legislation. It is my pure speculation anyone not on board of the Sessions train will be purged very quickly from DOJ.

There's a lot of bureaucracy in-between getting hired at the DOJ and working directly for Jeff Sessions.

True but he is gonna direct each section on what to do. Not enforcing civil rights, prosecuting 11 million immigrants and attacking legal weed in states that have legalized it. Somewhere lines will be crossed and people will be expected to toe the line or be forced out. Even the youngest of honors hires I suspect.

[Anonymous User]

Honors Program hiring is all about whether funding has been appropriated. Even during the hiring freeze created by the sequester, agencies were still hiring honors attorneys (albeit smaller classes and some agencies did suspend their programs). I wouldn't expect much of a change for this year's class because the money is there. The real issue is what happens once your two year probationary period is up to convert to permanent staff. Again it depends on the agency since some have automatic conversions while others require you to apply to open positions.

It's going to be a very uncertain four years in government. If you don't want that uncertainty in your life, I suggest that you look for employment elsewhere.

I think this makes the most sense. I asked my school's career office and got this response (the most insightful thing they've ever said to me), and it seems consistent with the above:

From the buzz on the career service offices listservs, I would expect offers to be few, but those that are made are likely to be honored. Unfortunately, until the new administration takes over, we’re stuck relying on “buzz.”

We have some past precedent for how other hiring freezes have affected offers. The last DOJ hiring freeze was in 2011-2014, when the number of offers made that year dropped by an estimated 60% from 2010. This was not an administration change, but rather a congress that didn’t reach a bipartisan budget that restored pre-sequestration funding levels for 3 years. What career services offices noticed was that offers simply weren’t made leading up to the anticipated freeze – not that offers were rescinded after the fact. The offices knew what was coming and didn’t extend as many offers, and thus they weren’t in the position of having to rescind offers (or lay off newly hired employees).

That doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be no offers from DOJ. Even Trump’s “first 100 days” plan includes an exception to the hiring freeze for “public safety” (which isn’t defined, but could include at least some DOJ attorneys).

I also emailed the folks I interviewed with at two different DOJ offices and they said they had no plans to change honors hiring. In short, it would have to be a very aggressive move by the administration and by Congress to un-appropriate funds that likely are already partly in place, for a department that is supposed to be doing more work for their policy goals. The politics don't totally add up. There is definitely risk in going DOJ if you get an offer, but it's not a hopeless endeavor.

[Anonymous User]

I turned down two other job opportunities and would be quitting my current job to accept a federal appointment. If a freeze prevents me from being hired, I'll feel devastated. I really hope this doesn't affect people who have already accepted offers.

[Anonymous User]

That wasn't my experience. I just got an offer, no tentative/formal distinction. Then I got an offer letter in December. My background check started after I got the offer letter. I never actually was told when it finished - I got a call in the spring saying "we can't conclude your background check without a start date, when do you want to start?" But they never told me the check was actually done.

My understanding is that most background check jobs go advertise>interview>tentative offer explicitly saying job is contingent on funding and check>background check>start date.

My tentative offer said nothing about funding. The only condition of the final offer was the background check.

[Anonymous User]

Why would you want to work for the trump administration? Honestly curious. Art III is one thing and probably safe and surely it varies by department, but a political branch could be implicating by association.

It's a bit of a stretch to say everyone who works for the federal government is working for the Trump Administration. Nobody is going to be implicated.

Disagree. DOJ certainly will be now under Sessions. The things he's gonna make DOJ do will cross constitutional lines. Remember this is a guy who doesn't believe the voting rights act is good legislation. It is my pure speculation anyone not on board of the Sessions train will be purged very quickly from DOJ.

There's a lot of bureaucracy in-between getting hired at the DOJ and working directly for Jeff Sessions.

True but he is gonna direct each section on what to do. Not enforcing civil rights, prosecuting 11 million immigrants and attacking legal weed in states that have legalized it. Somewhere lines will be crossed and people will be expected to toe the line or be forced out. Even the youngest of honors hires I suspect.

Yet again, it's really hard to fire government employees. People might leave because they don't want to do the work but there's no loyalty oath to the AG, just to the Constitution. I'd be much more worried about a general reduction in force than about some kind of Stalin-esque purge.

Or to put it this way: you make it sound like people are going to be rounded up and driven out. I think it's much more likely that if the work becomes incompatible with people's consciences etc. that people will choose to leave. The net result may be similar but those would be very different experiences for the people involved.

(They are also going to have to hire a FUCKLOAD more people if they really want to prosecute 11 million immigrants and go after weed in states that have legalized it.)

[jbagelboy]

Fyi my original point was that lawyers with a conscience won't work for a trump/sessions justice Dep't. Not that we will see some stalinist purge of civil servants.

There will be those who think they can insulate themselves in a highly competitive, traditionally cosmopolitan fiefdom like SDNY or NDCA. And it will be interesting to see that play out. And there will be those who are career prosecutors in districts across the country that don't feel attached to a particular program. But there will absolutely be a talent drain from AUSA over the next four years, especially now with an unreconstructed segregationist at the helm. It's not going to be the status symbol it once was in our profession.

[Anonymous User]

Fyi my original point was that lawyers with a conscience won't work for a trump/sessions justice Dep't. Not that we will see some stalinist purge of civil servants.

There will be those who think they can insulate themselves in a highly competitive, traditionally cosmopolitan fiefdom like SDNY or NDCA. And it will be interesting to see that play out. And there will be those who are career prosecutors in districts across the country that don't feel attached to a particular program. But there will absolutely be a talent drain from AUSA over the next four years, especially now with an unreconstructed segregationist at the helm. It's not going to be the status symbol it once was in our profession.

Anon above (anon because I work for DOJ) and I got your point; I was arguing against the "forced out" language. But I also think there are defensible reasons to continue to work as an AUSA, or at least to see how it goes. Government work is for the people, not the specific administration, and there is a shitload of average grunt criminal work that is going to have to get done regardless of who's at the top of the food chain. AUSA is very different/removed from main justice (for instance almost nothing to do with redistributing/voting) and you're talking a little like they're the same thing.

Obviously there are going to be changes (probably immigration crimes and I bet the Holder memo goes away/USAOs are expected to charge mandatory minimums in drug cases again - which, frankly, many will welcome). And I get that there will be people who don't want to be associated with that administration, which is absolutely legit. But I don't think career government service will cease to be a thing, either. I get that that may be simply that I don't want to quit my job, so maybe I'm being overly positive. But I also know lots of people who've served under a number of different administrations.

(I also find the comment about AUSA and status symbol kind of funny because again, tons of it is plain old grunt work.)

[Anonymous User]

http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/23/trump ... ng-freeze/

[Anonymous User]

http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/23/trump ... ng-freeze/

This doesn't have any source from the Trump transition team as to how they would actually implement the freeze. Purely speculative.

[andythefir]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washin ... ent=safari

"So a selective hiring freeze may be more realistic, Trump advisers say, where agencies that Republicans dislike shrink and ones they like grow."

[haus]

Have independent (self-funded) agencies historically been insulated from these types of hiring freezes?

The FDIC had little to no impact during the sequestration which had caused so much pain for many other agencies.

This is not to say that they are without restrictions. There is a congressionally set limit for the number of federal employees that the FDIC can have at any one time. I imagine that it would be possible for this number to be reduced, or for other forms of pain to be applied, but I suspect that FDIC (and others like it) will not face as much turmoil as more traditional agencies.

[TheFutureLawyer]

x

[A. Nony Mouse]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washin ... ent=safari

"So a selective hiring freeze may be more realistic, Trump advisers say, where agencies that Republicans dislike shrink and ones they like grow."

Shocking.

[andythefir]

https://news.usni.org/2016/11/17/congre ... racts-risk

I've been looking everywhere for this information, but it appears in that in November congress passed another continuing resolution that will continue to fund the government at its current levels through March 2017. So if the feds are advertising a job, that means that they have the funding, and not filling it would mean sitting on that cash. I could see an agency declining to spend the money anticipating a cut, but I could also see them trying to keep at current funding levels to prevent a cut. The DOJ page that lists available AUSA positions has kept on listing new jobs, where apparently they stopped doing that when they anticipated a cut during the last wave of freezes. Are the other agencies also posting new jobs?

Senators have also asked Obama to start a hiring freeze. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... d62616b5cf

Pulling together everything I've come across, it seems like the biggest wild card is whether the cuts will be retroactive like Reagan's were. Barring that, I don't anticipate there being particularly remarkable shenanigans. It also makes no sense to cut the DOJ given trump's talking points, but it also made no sense to do [all the trump things].

[zot1]

No. The current CR ends this Friday. Congress is currently trying to negotiate yet another CR that would until April, I think. However, since Dems are not being informed about anything in the CR, they might filibuster causing a government shut down. Budgets for the upcoming year are definitely not set, unfortunately.

[TheFutureLawyer]

x

[zot1]

http://m.govexec.com/management/2016/12 ... lriver-all

[Anonymous User]

Any updates on this? Still super worried about the possibility, and it's hard to see why ANYONE in government honors isn't panicking

[zot1]

If an agency finalizes your offer prior to the new administration, you're golden. If not, I'd keep my options open.

[ConfusedL1]

If an agency finalizes your offer prior to the new administration, you're golden. If not, I'd keep my options open.

What's your basis for believing this? Especially given the Reagan precedent.

[andythefir]

If an agency finalizes your offer prior to the new administration, you're golden. If not, I'd keep my options open.

Can you also define "finalize" here? Post-offer letter but pre-start date, for example?

[Anonymous User]

A director w/DOJ OARM told me that over 20 years, in many freeze situations, the DOJ HP was always exempted. And even the MIGHT reagan freeze only lasted three months. If you're starting in the fall, Trump would have to institute the longest freeze ever, by nearly double.

[Anonymous User]

A friend at my school was hired to work for the EPA. Is it pretty certain EPA hiring is on the chopping block?

[haus]

A friend at my school was hired to work for the EPA. Is it pretty certain EPA hiring is on the chopping block?

All of us who work for the federal government are likely in dow some odd times. Fortunately for us, the people who are attempting to destroy the various agencies do not have much for useful gov experience, so it is not quite clear how effective they can be at doing damage.

[zot1]

If an agency finalizes your offer prior to the new administration, you're golden. If not, I'd keep my options open.

What's your basis for believing this? Especially given the Reagan precedent.

If the offer is finalized, it is harder for the agency to take it back.

If the offer is not finalized, I would be worried because a Trump administration is hard to predict. You can have all the precedent you want, but as you see, Trump doesn't run on precedent.