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Good for them! Working without pay is completely nonsensical. The relationship between the employee and employer has been broken. If I were in some of these g

Good for them! Working without pay is completely nonsensical. The relationship between the employee and employer has been broken. If I were in some of these guys shoes I'd be working odd jobs to make ends meet.

thecolorblue 8y ago
Is it better to find short term solutions, like odd jobs, or to find new employment?
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  Depending what you were doing for the IRS, there may not be a ton of other employment out there for your skill set, especially on a short time frame.
- surge 8y ago
  "The IRS is also losing 25 IT staffers every week since the shutdown began, with many finding other jobs, one House aide said, citing the IRS officials' briefing." At least some are already doing this.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    You have to wonder how many of the remaining people are dedicating their time to updating their LinkedIn profile and searching for a new job...
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  One possible motivation for the administration holding out on the shutdown is it encourages people to leave the civil service; they've been fairly open previously about wanting to purge he federal civil service of those not loyal to Trump, either leaving holes or backfilling with loyalists. Civil service rules make this difficult, but driving people off with no pay (and publicly characterizing staying in that situation as a noble gesture of loyalty to the President, as some admin figures have done) is one way to do some.of that in a way which avoids civil service protections.
  - danielvf 8y ago
    It seems like the party of the administration is the one voting in favor of ending the shutdown? [Edit: No long as clear cut. Now both parties are voting against each other's ending bills. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll048.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll048.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll049.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll049.xml ]
    - anth_anm 8y ago
      Shutdown would be over if McConnell was willing to vote.
      - zaroth 8y ago
        Like they did yesterday?
  - anon4242 8y ago
    It may work well to purge the civil service of those not loyal to Trump, but it will also work to purge the civil service of the most competent workers.
  - burfog 8y ago
    It doesn't have to be "leaving holes or backfilling with loyalists". The "holes" go away if the positions are permanently discarded. Civil service rules are quite troubling. I can see the idea that it shouldn't be easy to make everything political, but the problem is that this goes only one way. If the president's predecessor hired a few million hostile partisans, what is he supposed to do? Is he just supposed to continue down that path, hiring tens of millions of his own partisans in order to win back control? Maybe the next president can hire a hundred million people, and then we're one president away from the entire population working for the federal government. There needs to be a reasonable way to toss out the partisan troublemakers who are undermining the will of the voters. Another troubling rule is that layoffs must be done according to seniority and veteran status, not performance. Performance is considered last! This is an absurdity; you couldn't run a normal non-monopoly software firm that way. The only reliable way to eliminate low-performing employees is to eliminate everybody in a given agency.
- lordnacho 8y ago
  I was wondering if the gig economy firms are seeing an uptick. People driving Uber, dogwalking, food delivery, etc. A fair few people don't have a lot of savings, as in will end up with no cash at all if they're not paid. Even if you wanted to keep working for deferred pay, if you're in that situation you'd need to do something quite soon. I suppose modern day loansharks are also having a great time.
- ryanlol 8y ago
  Wouldn’t it just be vastly easier to take out a loan?
  - sethammons 8y ago
    and pay interest? Or depending on your credit? taking out debt to continue working seems crazy to me.
  - evilduck 8y ago
    How many loans and for how long? The president has already stated this may take months or years. Do you have a lender willing to lend you six months to two years worth of pay? Would you even be willing to take on that amount of debt on top of all of your other financial responsibilities?
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      I guess not that many loans >Trump, Congress Reach Tentative Deal to Reopen Government for Three Weeks I’m not even in the US, but my inbox has been flooded with emails from various financial institutions offering interest-free loans to government workers.
  - rickyc091 8y ago
    It's actually not that easy to take out a loan. Someone making minimum wage with a home to put up as collateral, even with perfect credit would probably only be able to take out $10,000 to $20,000. As others have mentioned, there are interest rates involved with the loan as well. It's less than a credit card, but a lot harder to get approval. If the employees are currently paycheck to paycheck, and even considering a loan then chances are they would not be eligible for a loan.
samstave 8y ago
"odd jobs" Here is a question: How can al lthe employees of the IRS for a collective to say "fuck the IRS - here is a new way of doing things based on our inside knowledge" Now - you may say "well thats a stupid thing to imagine" But lets take it to the private sector: Imagine that Facebook stopped paying its employees - they have 1.5 billion customers to handle... Don't you think the employees couldn't just walk away and say "let start a new thing based on the information we collectively know" Certainly they could - but I imagine the average FB salary is much higher than the collective IRS salary... but still - if you wanted to affect change in the world for decades to come - it could come from a giant group of IRS employees doing something that disrupts the opacity of taxes. (Fuck you H&R Block, BTW)
- imgabe 8y ago
  It's not really comparable to a private sector company. Anything the IRS employees formed by themselves would not have the authority to collect tax revenue on the behalf of the US government. Sure, they could make something that would compete with Intuit and H&R Block, etc, but it wouldn't be the IRS, and we would still need the IRS.
  - alehul 8y ago
    Fun (maybe not applicable) fact here, but there is a huge history of privatizing tax collection. In fact, we coincidentally have that to thank for the foundation of logic and memory! Pascal, as a teen, essentially invented the calculator (albeit a very slow version) for his father; the device was called a Pascaline [0], and he built it because his father was a "tax collector" in 17th century France. In those days, tax collector meant that you would buy the right to collect 'x' in government taxes (and keep for yourself), for 'x - $discount', where $discount was the balance of 1) what the government believed was worth them avoiding collection themselves, 2) what the tax collector believed they could still reasonably profit from the difference of. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_calculator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_calculator
    - vageli 8y ago

thecolorblue 8y ago

Is it better to find short term solutions, like odd jobs, or to find new employment?

mikepurvis 8y ago
Depending what you were doing for the IRS, there may not be a ton of other employment out there for your skill set, especially on a short time frame.
surge 8y ago
"The IRS is also losing 25 IT staffers every week since the shutdown began, with many finding other jobs, one House aide said, citing the IRS officials' briefing." At least some are already doing this.
- astrodust 8y ago
  You have to wonder how many of the remaining people are dedicating their time to updating their LinkedIn profile and searching for a new job...
dragonwriter 8y ago
One possible motivation for the administration holding out on the shutdown is it encourages people to leave the civil service; they've been fairly open previously about wanting to purge he federal civil service of those not loyal to Trump, either leaving holes or backfilling with loyalists. Civil service rules make this difficult, but driving people off with no pay (and publicly characterizing staying in that situation as a noble gesture of loyalty to the President, as some admin figures have done) is one way to do some.of that in a way which avoids civil service protections.
- danielvf 8y ago
  It seems like the party of the administration is the one voting in favor of ending the shutdown? [Edit: No long as clear cut. Now both parties are voting against each other's ending bills. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll048.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll048.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll049.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll049.xml ]
  - anth_anm 8y ago
    Shutdown would be over if McConnell was willing to vote.
    - zaroth 8y ago
      Like they did yesterday?
- anon4242 8y ago
  It may work well to purge the civil service of those not loyal to Trump, but it will also work to purge the civil service of the most competent workers.
- burfog 8y ago
  It doesn't have to be "leaving holes or backfilling with loyalists". The "holes" go away if the positions are permanently discarded. Civil service rules are quite troubling. I can see the idea that it shouldn't be easy to make everything political, but the problem is that this goes only one way. If the president's predecessor hired a few million hostile partisans, what is he supposed to do? Is he just supposed to continue down that path, hiring tens of millions of his own partisans in order to win back control? Maybe the next president can hire a hundred million people, and then we're one president away from the entire population working for the federal government. There needs to be a reasonable way to toss out the partisan troublemakers who are undermining the will of the voters. Another troubling rule is that layoffs must be done according to seniority and veteran status, not performance. Performance is considered last! This is an absurdity; you couldn't run a normal non-monopoly software firm that way. The only reliable way to eliminate low-performing employees is to eliminate everybody in a given agency.
lordnacho 8y ago
I was wondering if the gig economy firms are seeing an uptick. People driving Uber, dogwalking, food delivery, etc. A fair few people don't have a lot of savings, as in will end up with no cash at all if they're not paid. Even if you wanted to keep working for deferred pay, if you're in that situation you'd need to do something quite soon. I suppose modern day loansharks are also having a great time.
ryanlol 8y ago
Wouldn’t it just be vastly easier to take out a loan?
- sethammons 8y ago
  and pay interest? Or depending on your credit? taking out debt to continue working seems crazy to me.
- evilduck 8y ago
  How many loans and for how long? The president has already stated this may take months or years. Do you have a lender willing to lend you six months to two years worth of pay? Would you even be willing to take on that amount of debt on top of all of your other financial responsibilities?
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    I guess not that many loans >Trump, Congress Reach Tentative Deal to Reopen Government for Three Weeks I’m not even in the US, but my inbox has been flooded with emails from various financial institutions offering interest-free loans to government workers.
- rickyc091 8y ago
  It's actually not that easy to take out a loan. Someone making minimum wage with a home to put up as collateral, even with perfect credit would probably only be able to take out $10,000 to $20,000. As others have mentioned, there are interest rates involved with the loan as well. It's less than a credit card, but a lot harder to get approval. If the employees are currently paycheck to paycheck, and even considering a loan then chances are they would not be eligible for a loan.

samstave 8y ago

"odd jobs" Here is a question: How can al lthe employees of the IRS for a collective to say "fuck the IRS - here is a new way of doing things based on our inside knowledge" Now - you may say "well thats a stupid thing to imagine" But lets take it to the private sector: Imagine that Facebook stopped paying its employees - they have 1.5 billion customers to handle... Don't you think the employees couldn't just walk away and say "let start a new thing based on the information we collectively know" Certainly they could - but I imagine the average FB salary is much higher than the collective IRS salary... but still - if you wanted to affect change in the world for decades to come - it could come from a giant group of IRS employees doing something that disrupts the opacity of taxes. (Fuck you H&R Block, BTW)

imgabe 8y ago
It's not really comparable to a private sector company. Anything the IRS employees formed by themselves would not have the authority to collect tax revenue on the behalf of the US government. Sure, they could make something that would compete with Intuit and H&R Block, etc, but it wouldn't be the IRS, and we would still need the IRS.
- alehul 8y ago
  Fun (maybe not applicable) fact here, but there is a huge history of privatizing tax collection. In fact, we coincidentally have that to thank for the foundation of logic and memory! Pascal, as a teen, essentially invented the calculator (albeit a very slow version) for his father; the device was called a Pascaline [0], and he built it because his father was a "tax collector" in 17th century France. In those days, tax collector meant that you would buy the right to collect 'x' in government taxes (and keep for yourself), for 'x - $discount', where $discount was the balance of 1) what the government believed was worth them avoiding collection themselves, 2) what the tax collector believed they could still reasonably profit from the difference of. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_calculator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_calculator
  - vageli 8y ago