6 ms·

Down hundreds of staff, Weather Service ‘teetering on the brink of failure’

164 points by cryptoz 9y ago

th0ma5 9y ago
This has wide and serious ramifications for business. Private weather data is nice, but most of it is derived from NOAA resources.
iamthirsty 9y ago
> The National Weather Service Employees Organization, its labor union, said the lack of staff is taking a toll on forecasting operations and that the agency is “for the first time in its history teetering on the brink of failure.” Managers are being forced to scale back certain operations, and staff are stressed and overworked. > “It’s gotten so bad that we’re not going to be able to provide service that two years ago we were able to provide to public, emergency managers and media,” said Dan Sobien, the president of the union. “We’ve never been in that position before.” It makes me deeply discouraged that something so vital to life in general is almost impossible to keep staffed (mostly because of a lack of funds), yet the military's budget increased by $54 Billion this year — to a total of $639 Billion for FY2018. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_request_for_FY2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  The article quotes the union “understaffing is not due to underfunding”
  - cryptoz 9y ago
    As peterwwillis points out below, a part of it is due to a direct Trump order to not hire any staff earlier this year.
    - peterwwillis 9y ago
      Both are correct. Funding is not the issue, but the Trump order did exacerbate the issue, as well as the lack of nominating key positions in NOAA and NWS.
      - dmix 9y ago
        Both being correct does not make them both equally correct.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - timmaah 9y ago
      The article does not mention Trump once. This is all pre-Trump > An independent report from the Government Accountability Office showed staff vacancies increased 57 percent from 2014 to 2016. The overall vacancy rate reached 11 percent or 455 positions at the end of 2016 up from just 5 percent (211 positions) at the end of 2010, the report said.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - acdha 9y ago
    But also had this to say: “The Weather Service has faced different obstacles in trying to fill positions, including the 2013 budget sequester, related hiring freezes, and changes in administrations. In 2012, challenged to find funding to compensate its workers, it was embroiled in a “reprogramming” scandal, in which it moved around funds to cover payroll, without congressional approval.” That's the pattern you'll find in many government agencies — they might in aggregate have the money available but it's hard to spend on the right things or there are policy changes needed for quality of life improvements which cause people to leave. People outside might not have appreciated that the sequester lead to things like mandatory furloughs — i.e. your boss telling you to pick the day you're going to stay home and not get paid, even if you need the money and have work to get done — which were really bad for morale. Traditionally job security was one thing which lead people to endure some of those problems but that's been under attack for awhile and you had recent things like congress considering cutting retirement, all of which aren't going to be great for getting people to take jobs: https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to-advance-2018-budget-resolution-with-federal-retirement-cuts/ https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to...
    - greedo 9y ago
      Budget Sequestration has had a dramatic effect on military spending as well. Silo'd funds make it difficult for long term procurement etc etc.
      - acdha 9y ago
        I know someone who worked on a big navy project which almost had a (IIRC) multi-year delay because even though it was almost certain to be funded, they couldn’t legally commit money on a contract with a shipyard and missing that deadline would mean the facility would be booked by someone else. Those kinds of hit to long-term planning really crank up the stress and costs.
- corey_moncure 9y ago
  That's not how I read this at all: >National Weather Service Employees Organization >“The NWS leadership has been incapable of placing their budget priorities correctly,” > “understaffing is not due to underfunding,” > “unspent carry-over funds” in the tens of millions of dollars
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    In federal government budgeting dollars are allocated for specific programs or services. You might have a program, say climate change, that the administration doesn’t like because politics and refuses to perform work in, despite the wishes of Congress. You may have other programs like forecasting that have no money allocated at all. This is mismanagement by design. The GOP types want to outsource the NWS function and have been trying to do so for many years through the budget process. The senator from Pennsylvania tried to prohibit free release of weather data to make some rain for Accuweather, which is a PA company.
    - tekjenitalor 9y ago
      Well if the NWS hadn't screwed the decision for prime on awips2 so badly they might have some of my sympathy. Bad decisions end up biting everyone down the road.
timmaah 9y ago
Why is the headline here missing "labor union says" The actual Weather Service seems to think they are doing just fine. “Let me state emphatically that we would never take an action that would jeopardize the services we provide to emergency managers and the public,” she said. “NWS is taking definitive steps to ensure the health and well-being of our employees through guidance to local managers on scheduling and flexibility.”
- cryptoz 9y ago
  Headlines are limited to 80 characters here. The full headline was too long and I was not allowed to post it. I cut off the end, as it was present in bold at the top of the page after clicking, and seemed the only way to acceptably shorten the title so that it could be discussed here.
  - timmaah 9y ago
    > Weather Service ‘teetering on the brink of failure,’ labor union says
    - cryptoz 9y ago
      That eliminates the main reason for the article to have been written, causes the reader to wonder if the NWS was just bombed with a nuke or something, and is absolutely clickbait. I stand by my headline change.
    - awj 9y ago
      So ... highlighting that this "brink of failure" is a staffing problem isn't as important as pointing out that the labor union is the one making the statement? Ok then...
- metamet 9y ago
  Why did your quote ignore the context of that quote? > Whether the cutbacks will affect the quality of forecasts and warnings, “I can’t say for certain,” Martin said. “You’re working people double shifts, some people aren’t getting days off, and you’re grinding people down. There is that potential [to affect the forecast quality]. The longer this goes on, the more the potential rises. It’s a long winter ahead.” > The Burlington Free-Press reported similar circumstances at the forecast office serving its region. “Given our staffing, our ability to fill our mission of protecting life and property would be nearly impossible if we had a big storm,” Brooke Taber, a Weather Service forecaster and union steward, told the paper. > Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, pushed back on any notion the organization is neglecting obligations to constituents and the health of its staff. “Let me state emphatically that we would never take an action that would jeopardize the services we provide to emergency managers and the public,” she said. “NWS is taking definitive steps to ensure the health and well-being of our employees through guidance to local managers on scheduling and flexibility.” Seems far from "just fine".
peterwwillis 9y ago
"the National Weather Service had 216 vacant positions it could not fill due to a governmentwide hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration, according to a recently released document." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/09/27/the-energy-202-trump-s-hiring-freeze-shrunk-national-weather-service-staff-before-hurricanes-hit/59cabf8330fb0468cea81c01/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-ene... "The Weather Service’s head count finally stabilized in 2016 [...] But the staffing dip resumed in 2017, falling from 3,425 in December to 3,368 in August," "Staffing had declined so much that the Government Accountability Office wrote in May that employees were challenged in their ability “to complete key tasks.”" "“There's no question that the hiring freeze had an effect,” said Dan Sobien, NWSEO president. “But really it was the straw that broke the camel's back.” He added, “The camel was already weighed down to the ground.” "The National Hurricane Center, a Weather Service division, has been led by an acting director since May. An acting career official is heading NOAA until President Trump nominates and the Senate confirms a permanent replacement. Trump has waited longer than any other president to fill that role." "In either case, the vacancies at the Weather Service were numerous enough, even before Trump was inaugurated, for the GAO to audit the agency's hiring practices." "In July, the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote in a report that lawmakers are “very concerned with the continued number of employee vacancies” even though Congress has provided enough money to fill them."
chk_ur_autism 9y ago
The slow, subtle erosion of our public agencies that don't contribute to the military industrial complex and/or the energy sector is really disheartening.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
miguelrochefort 9y ago
We still need humans for weather forecast?
- cryptoz 9y ago
  Yes, very much so. Computer models are not forecasts, and it would be a terrible state of affairs if we did not have human forecasters to make forecasts.
  - Pyxl101 9y ago
    Why are computer models not forecasts? Why would it be a terrible state of affairs not to have human forecasters? More specifically, what role do humans play in digesting the output of the computer model and producing the forecast? What adjustments or corrections are made to what the model says is going to happen, and based on what reasoning? "My gut tells me the tornado is going to move east, even though the computer says it will move west with an estimated 98% likelihood"? Are the humans doing more than creating a human-consumable verbal summary of what the computer model says will happen -- explaining the severity and location of the predicted weather in human terms?
    - cos2pi 9y ago
      Computer models certainly produce forecasts, but humans are needed to interpret these forecasts. At each National Weather Service office, forecasters typically use model output to guide their daily forecast products, such as temperatures and precipitation probabilities. However, these forecasters are aware of smaller-scale nuances of their forecast area, such as topographic influences, land-sea interactions or urban heat island effects, which models may struggle to resolve. Human knowledge of model limitations helps to produce a better forecast. A further example would be hurricane forecasting, where National Hurricane Center forecasts typically outperform most models (see http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify6.shtml http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify6.shtml for starters).
      - Pyxl101 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
creaghpatr 9y ago
Wonder where The Weather Company fits in here- after all, they seem to have no trouble hiring at a rapid clip- I assume most people get their weather from the Weather Company but I live in Atlanta where it's located so it's a given here. I'm guessing the private sector pay is better, wouldn't be surprised if they were poaching NWS employees.
- TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
  I wonder if TWC uses NWS data in its forecasting.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    NWS runs the preponderance of weather radar in the US. They probably run all of it, I'm just not sure if there are any independent ones.
    - rplst8 9y ago
      They don't run all of it. Many city news channels have their own radar and forecast teams. That's not to say I don't think the NWS is an essential government function.
      - awj 9y ago
        > Many city news channels have their own radar and forecast teams. While this is true, it's probably also worth pointing out that those forecasts likely depend on NWS data in some fashion.
      - maxerickson 9y ago
        Do you know offhand of any stations that make it really clear they have their own radar? Lots of them say something sly about using the only radar network...
dmitrygr 9y ago
Keep in mind, it is not just your weather channel and your little Weather Widget on your iPhone that is at stake here. They also provide forecasts that your airliner uses to plan safe flights.
aezell 9y ago
If you go to the USAJOBS site and search for National Weather Service, you get about 270 results. If you then limit that to jobs that are open to the public, you get just under a hundred jobs. So, I think both sides are telling A truth. The NWS says there are around 270 open positions. That is demonstrably true. The union is saying there are about 700 open positions. They might think there are vacancies for which requisitions have not yet been made. Perhaps, therein lies the discrepancy. And it speaks to the rest of the odd financing and accounting discussed in the article.
- dmix 9y ago
  Are union jobs like that really all open to the public on sites like USAJOBS? I was just reading an article about how many them are handed out through connections to other union members, it's usually the same group of tight-knight union workers on every public works project.
  - acdha 9y ago
    > many of them are handed out through connections to other union member Government hiring doesn’t work like that. Positions are usually open to everyone (or at least US citizens) or only existing staff.
    - dmix 9y ago
      So there's an agency that provides oversight that makes sure that the jobs were handed out to people who applied through USAJOBS and verifies they were available to the general public? It's not the same few private companies getting the same jobs every time and handing out union cards to a small group of tight-knit people? Typically family and friends of the original group? And they don't limit each hire to a narrow specific role defined in the RFP so they can hire more people for a job that a single multi-talented person can do? That's good. I wouldn't want that to be the case like in other industries with artificial scarcity and special power structures.
    - gebeeson 9y ago
      There are many positions that are in effect only for those already in the employ of the contract. Either lateral or promotion but only for an 'insider'. This is not particular to this single contract but can be applicable for all contracts depending on many factors.
pasbesoin 9y ago
Given that government employees -- not to mention political appointees in transitory leadership positions -- are increasingly enjoined, mandated, and coerced to tow the party line (of the party in power), I'd pay a fair amount of attention to what the employees' union has to say about the matter. A voice with substantial political clout of its own, as well as some "anonym-ization" from individual comments subject to punishment including career termination. There is separate reporting to the effect of staff becoming extremely stretched and overworked with the combination of hurricanes and fires that recently hit. There are the reported proposed cuts to NOAA/NCAR budgets of 15+%. Cuts threatening to cripple current data collection efforts and ongoing innovation and developments in same. At a time when year-upon-year environmental and weather circumstances make increasingly clear that we need a better and more detailed understanding of what is going on (and of how we might deal with it). U.S. Government weather services provide the backbone upon which private, commercial forecasting builds -- when they are not simply repackaging and repeating the government-provided information. Those services are also critical to the ongoing management and execution of many commercial sectors within the U.S. economy. Agriculture, shipping, transport, even the "dirty old fossil fuel" sectors. Forecasting was wrong one one of our recent winters experiencing extreme cold spells particularly east of the Rocky Mountains, and propane supplies that had not been bolstered ran extremely low, leading to dramatic price hikes and shortages and considerable economic distress downstream not just to households but to businesses, i.e. other productive sectors. These services are vital to a planful, productive execution of our economy. But, as in many cases, the "government is bad" people refuse to acknowledge this. Look at the EPA. Those folks now can't speak publicly without "official sign-off" of a political leadership. Politics before science. Where present, set your sentiments about "unions" aside and look at why this may be the primary or only route via which you are hearing about problems, from the people in these institutions. P.S. I forgot to mention: While I have mixed feelings about over-doing the "soft skills" aspects of the following, part of the head-count concern right now includes expanding efforts to translate data into communication that will make people take pro-active action to minimize their own risks. For a burgeoning emergency, making it clearer where may flood and what that will look like, so that, for example, people evacuate before they are stranded and at imminent physical risk necessitating risky and costly rescue. Reassessing and better communicating environmental risks for specific areas, to spur more pro-active zoning and other regulation as well as individual actions such as seeking flood insurance (before an uninsured person ends up needing a government-funded bail-out).
loco5niner 9y ago
.... according to it's union.
novaleaf 9y ago
i live in Woodinville, a suburb of Seattle, and have noticed over the last couple years that the weather forecast is getting really bad. Often (maybe once/month) showing 0% chance of rain when it's actually pouring rain. The temperature forecast also seems suspect, but I don't own a thermometer so can't provide numbers there.

164 points by cryptoz 9y ago

This has wide and serious ramifications for business. Private weather data is nice, but most of it is derived from NOAA resources.

iamthirsty 9y ago

> The National Weather Service Employees Organization, its labor union, said the lack of staff is taking a toll on forecasting operations and that the agency is “for the first time in its history teetering on the brink of failure.” Managers are being forced to scale back certain operations, and staff are stressed and overworked. > “It’s gotten so bad that we’re not going to be able to provide service that two years ago we were able to provide to public, emergency managers and media,” said Dan Sobien, the president of the union. “We’ve never been in that position before.” It makes me deeply discouraged that something so vital to life in general is almost impossible to keep staffed (mostly because of a lack of funds), yet the military's budget increased by $54 Billion this year — to a total of $639 Billion for FY2018. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_request_for_FY2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

bryanlarsen 9y ago
The article quotes the union “understaffing is not due to underfunding”
- cryptoz 9y ago
  As peterwwillis points out below, a part of it is due to a direct Trump order to not hire any staff earlier this year.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    Both are correct. Funding is not the issue, but the Trump order did exacerbate the issue, as well as the lack of nominating key positions in NOAA and NWS.
    - dmix 9y ago
      Both being correct does not make them both equally correct.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - timmaah 9y ago
    The article does not mention Trump once. This is all pre-Trump > An independent report from the Government Accountability Office showed staff vacancies increased 57 percent from 2014 to 2016. The overall vacancy rate reached 11 percent or 455 positions at the end of 2016 up from just 5 percent (211 positions) at the end of 2010, the report said.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- acdha 9y ago
  But also had this to say: “The Weather Service has faced different obstacles in trying to fill positions, including the 2013 budget sequester, related hiring freezes, and changes in administrations. In 2012, challenged to find funding to compensate its workers, it was embroiled in a “reprogramming” scandal, in which it moved around funds to cover payroll, without congressional approval.” That's the pattern you'll find in many government agencies — they might in aggregate have the money available but it's hard to spend on the right things or there are policy changes needed for quality of life improvements which cause people to leave. People outside might not have appreciated that the sequester lead to things like mandatory furloughs — i.e. your boss telling you to pick the day you're going to stay home and not get paid, even if you need the money and have work to get done — which were really bad for morale. Traditionally job security was one thing which lead people to endure some of those problems but that's been under attack for awhile and you had recent things like congress considering cutting retirement, all of which aren't going to be great for getting people to take jobs: https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to-advance-2018-budget-resolution-with-federal-retirement-cuts/ https://federalnewsradio.com/retirement/2017/10/house-set-to...
  - greedo 9y ago
    Budget Sequestration has had a dramatic effect on military spending as well. Silo'd funds make it difficult for long term procurement etc etc.
    - acdha 9y ago
      I know someone who worked on a big navy project which almost had a (IIRC) multi-year delay because even though it was almost certain to be funded, they couldn’t legally commit money on a contract with a shipyard and missing that deadline would mean the facility would be booked by someone else. Those kinds of hit to long-term planning really crank up the stress and costs.
corey_moncure 9y ago
That's not how I read this at all: >National Weather Service Employees Organization >“The NWS leadership has been incapable of placing their budget priorities correctly,” > “understaffing is not due to underfunding,” > “unspent carry-over funds” in the tens of millions of dollars
- Spooky23 9y ago
  In federal government budgeting dollars are allocated for specific programs or services. You might have a program, say climate change, that the administration doesn’t like because politics and refuses to perform work in, despite the wishes of Congress. You may have other programs like forecasting that have no money allocated at all. This is mismanagement by design. The GOP types want to outsource the NWS function and have been trying to do so for many years through the budget process. The senator from Pennsylvania tried to prohibit free release of weather data to make some rain for Accuweather, which is a PA company.
  - tekjenitalor 9y ago
    Well if the NWS hadn't screwed the decision for prime on awips2 so badly they might have some of my sympathy. Bad decisions end up biting everyone down the road.

timmaah 9y ago

Why is the headline here missing "labor union says" The actual Weather Service seems to think they are doing just fine. “Let me state emphatically that we would never take an action that would jeopardize the services we provide to emergency managers and the public,” she said. “NWS is taking definitive steps to ensure the health and well-being of our employees through guidance to local managers on scheduling and flexibility.”

cryptoz 9y ago
Headlines are limited to 80 characters here. The full headline was too long and I was not allowed to post it. I cut off the end, as it was present in bold at the top of the page after clicking, and seemed the only way to acceptably shorten the title so that it could be discussed here.
- timmaah 9y ago
  > Weather Service ‘teetering on the brink of failure,’ labor union says
  - cryptoz 9y ago
    That eliminates the main reason for the article to have been written, causes the reader to wonder if the NWS was just bombed with a nuke or something, and is absolutely clickbait. I stand by my headline change.
  - awj 9y ago
    So ... highlighting that this "brink of failure" is a staffing problem isn't as important as pointing out that the labor union is the one making the statement? Ok then...
metamet 9y ago
Why did your quote ignore the context of that quote? > Whether the cutbacks will affect the quality of forecasts and warnings, “I can’t say for certain,” Martin said. “You’re working people double shifts, some people aren’t getting days off, and you’re grinding people down. There is that potential [to affect the forecast quality]. The longer this goes on, the more the potential rises. It’s a long winter ahead.” > The Burlington Free-Press reported similar circumstances at the forecast office serving its region. “Given our staffing, our ability to fill our mission of protecting life and property would be nearly impossible if we had a big storm,” Brooke Taber, a Weather Service forecaster and union steward, told the paper. > Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, pushed back on any notion the organization is neglecting obligations to constituents and the health of its staff. “Let me state emphatically that we would never take an action that would jeopardize the services we provide to emergency managers and the public,” she said. “NWS is taking definitive steps to ensure the health and well-being of our employees through guidance to local managers on scheduling and flexibility.” Seems far from "just fine".

peterwwillis 9y ago

"the National Weather Service had 216 vacant positions it could not fill due to a governmentwide hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration, according to a recently released document." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/09/27/the-energy-202-trump-s-hiring-freeze-shrunk-national-weather-service-staff-before-hurricanes-hit/59cabf8330fb0468cea81c01/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-ene... "The Weather Service’s head count finally stabilized in 2016 [...] But the staffing dip resumed in 2017, falling from 3,425 in December to 3,368 in August," "Staffing had declined so much that the Government Accountability Office wrote in May that employees were challenged in their ability “to complete key tasks.”" "“There's no question that the hiring freeze had an effect,” said Dan Sobien, NWSEO president. “But really it was the straw that broke the camel's back.” He added, “The camel was already weighed down to the ground.” "The National Hurricane Center, a Weather Service division, has been led by an acting director since May. An acting career official is heading NOAA until President Trump nominates and the Senate confirms a permanent replacement. Trump has waited longer than any other president to fill that role." "In either case, the vacancies at the Weather Service were numerous enough, even before Trump was inaugurated, for the GAO to audit the agency's hiring practices." "In July, the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote in a report that lawmakers are “very concerned with the continued number of employee vacancies” even though Congress has provided enough money to fill them."

chk_ur_autism 9y ago

The slow, subtle erosion of our public agencies that don't contribute to the military industrial complex and/or the energy sector is really disheartening.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

miguelrochefort 9y ago

We still need humans for weather forecast?

cryptoz 9y ago
Yes, very much so. Computer models are not forecasts, and it would be a terrible state of affairs if we did not have human forecasters to make forecasts.
- Pyxl101 9y ago
  Why are computer models not forecasts? Why would it be a terrible state of affairs not to have human forecasters? More specifically, what role do humans play in digesting the output of the computer model and producing the forecast? What adjustments or corrections are made to what the model says is going to happen, and based on what reasoning? "My gut tells me the tornado is going to move east, even though the computer says it will move west with an estimated 98% likelihood"? Are the humans doing more than creating a human-consumable verbal summary of what the computer model says will happen -- explaining the severity and location of the predicted weather in human terms?
  - cos2pi 9y ago
    Computer models certainly produce forecasts, but humans are needed to interpret these forecasts. At each National Weather Service office, forecasters typically use model output to guide their daily forecast products, such as temperatures and precipitation probabilities. However, these forecasters are aware of smaller-scale nuances of their forecast area, such as topographic influences, land-sea interactions or urban heat island effects, which models may struggle to resolve. Human knowledge of model limitations helps to produce a better forecast. A further example would be hurricane forecasting, where National Hurricane Center forecasts typically outperform most models (see http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify6.shtml http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify6.shtml for starters).
    - Pyxl101 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

creaghpatr 9y ago

Wonder where The Weather Company fits in here- after all, they seem to have no trouble hiring at a rapid clip- I assume most people get their weather from the Weather Company but I live in Atlanta where it's located so it's a given here. I'm guessing the private sector pay is better, wouldn't be surprised if they were poaching NWS employees.

TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
I wonder if TWC uses NWS data in its forecasting.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  NWS runs the preponderance of weather radar in the US. They probably run all of it, I'm just not sure if there are any independent ones.
  - rplst8 9y ago
    They don't run all of it. Many city news channels have their own radar and forecast teams. That's not to say I don't think the NWS is an essential government function.
    - awj 9y ago
      > Many city news channels have their own radar and forecast teams. While this is true, it's probably also worth pointing out that those forecasts likely depend on NWS data in some fashion.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Do you know offhand of any stations that make it really clear they have their own radar? Lots of them say something sly about using the only radar network...

dmitrygr 9y ago

Keep in mind, it is not just your weather channel and your little Weather Widget on your iPhone that is at stake here. They also provide forecasts that your airliner uses to plan safe flights.

aezell 9y ago

If you go to the USAJOBS site and search for National Weather Service, you get about 270 results. If you then limit that to jobs that are open to the public, you get just under a hundred jobs. So, I think both sides are telling A truth. The NWS says there are around 270 open positions. That is demonstrably true. The union is saying there are about 700 open positions. They might think there are vacancies for which requisitions have not yet been made. Perhaps, therein lies the discrepancy. And it speaks to the rest of the odd financing and accounting discussed in the article.

dmix 9y ago
Are union jobs like that really all open to the public on sites like USAJOBS? I was just reading an article about how many them are handed out through connections to other union members, it's usually the same group of tight-knight union workers on every public works project.
- acdha 9y ago
  > many of them are handed out through connections to other union member Government hiring doesn’t work like that. Positions are usually open to everyone (or at least US citizens) or only existing staff.
  - dmix 9y ago
    So there's an agency that provides oversight that makes sure that the jobs were handed out to people who applied through USAJOBS and verifies they were available to the general public? It's not the same few private companies getting the same jobs every time and handing out union cards to a small group of tight-knit people? Typically family and friends of the original group? And they don't limit each hire to a narrow specific role defined in the RFP so they can hire more people for a job that a single multi-talented person can do? That's good. I wouldn't want that to be the case like in other industries with artificial scarcity and special power structures.
  - gebeeson 9y ago
    There are many positions that are in effect only for those already in the employ of the contract. Either lateral or promotion but only for an 'insider'. This is not particular to this single contract but can be applicable for all contracts depending on many factors.

pasbesoin 9y ago

Given that government employees -- not to mention political appointees in transitory leadership positions -- are increasingly enjoined, mandated, and coerced to tow the party line (of the party in power), I'd pay a fair amount of attention to what the employees' union has to say about the matter. A voice with substantial political clout of its own, as well as some "anonym-ization" from individual comments subject to punishment including career termination. There is separate reporting to the effect of staff becoming extremely stretched and overworked with the combination of hurricanes and fires that recently hit. There are the reported proposed cuts to NOAA/NCAR budgets of 15+%. Cuts threatening to cripple current data collection efforts and ongoing innovation and developments in same. At a time when year-upon-year environmental and weather circumstances make increasingly clear that we need a better and more detailed understanding of what is going on (and of how we might deal with it). U.S. Government weather services provide the backbone upon which private, commercial forecasting builds -- when they are not simply repackaging and repeating the government-provided information. Those services are also critical to the ongoing management and execution of many commercial sectors within the U.S. economy. Agriculture, shipping, transport, even the "dirty old fossil fuel" sectors. Forecasting was wrong one one of our recent winters experiencing extreme cold spells particularly east of the Rocky Mountains, and propane supplies that had not been bolstered ran extremely low, leading to dramatic price hikes and shortages and considerable economic distress downstream not just to households but to businesses, i.e. other productive sectors. These services are vital to a planful, productive execution of our economy. But, as in many cases, the "government is bad" people refuse to acknowledge this. Look at the EPA. Those folks now can't speak publicly without "official sign-off" of a political leadership. Politics before science. Where present, set your sentiments about "unions" aside and look at why this may be the primary or only route via which you are hearing about problems, from the people in these institutions. P.S. I forgot to mention: While I have mixed feelings about over-doing the "soft skills" aspects of the following, part of the head-count concern right now includes expanding efforts to translate data into communication that will make people take pro-active action to minimize their own risks. For a burgeoning emergency, making it clearer where may flood and what that will look like, so that, for example, people evacuate before they are stranded and at imminent physical risk necessitating risky and costly rescue. Reassessing and better communicating environmental risks for specific areas, to spur more pro-active zoning and other regulation as well as individual actions such as seeking flood insurance (before an uninsured person ends up needing a government-funded bail-out).

loco5niner 9y ago

.... according to it's union.

novaleaf 9y ago

i live in Woodinville, a suburb of Seattle, and have noticed over the last couple years that the weather forecast is getting really bad. Often (maybe once/month) showing 0% chance of rain when it's actually pouring rain. The temperature forecast also seems suspect, but I don't own a thermometer so can't provide numbers there.