568
Ah the land of the free
BTW, this is a real violation of free speech... Negative consequences from the government for speaking... Even in the context of your own work responsibility
No, it's not, the governemnt can censor its own workers or speech that its workers make. The government can censor itself.
He didn't even make the speech. Nothing he did could be considered misconduct or insubordination.
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It's a violation of free speech, it's just not a violation of US law. Free speech is not the first amendment.
So Americans only have free speech when the government says it's ok?
I'm mean, I know freedom of speech is a narrower concept than most people realize but if the government can retaliate against you because you would share factual evidence as part of your job, then you guys really don't have freedom of speech
I mean, I guess you guys beat North Korea in this topic and .... That's about it
It's more like when you work for the government, you're allowed to say what in a personal context. Once you start throwing around a title linked to the government, you're no longer speaking as yourself, youre speaking as the government. The government can tell you what the government is allowed to say.
It's the difference between an employee of the coast guard joining Greenpeace vs. That employee publicly saying the United States Coast Guard is joining Greenpeace. The coast guard can't fire an employee for their own political beliefs, but they can totally fire a guy for saying shit the coast guard doesn't want while representing the coast guard. Public speaking and seminars and shit like this have explicit rules about who can say what and when as a government employee in an official capacity.
Free Speech™*
*(Available only for the bourgeoisie ruling class. Terms and conditions may apply)
The US government can not censor speech for private citizens except in extremely limited terms.
This is a government employee communicating on behalf of the government. The government has every right to censor the speech that it puts out.
Also, for what it's worth, the US has much stronger free speech protections than the EU. Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate.
How? It's not easy or quick to fire a government employee. It can take months.
In the US, many government workers are contractors, who are easier to fire. Full time employees of the government are less common, and as you said are harder to fire, get better benefits, etc.
It should be noted that this shift has happened in the last 30 years or so. Before that civil servants were the norm and contractors the exception. Civil service used to be a very good job that had some of the best benefits you could find, including some of the last remaining pension programs. You could live a very decent middle class life being a civil servant. Contractors are no cheaper for the government but it does move the liability from them to a 3rd party private employer. And now all the money goes to the business men who get the contracts and pay their employees a pittance with nearly no benefits.
Everything you said is still true. As long as you are an office worker that's all correct. The government does still contact out most work but most offices still have plenty of government employees. It's just now the government is more of an oversight and managerial role for 80% of it's employees. Besides things like hr and finance. It'd be nice if the government actually did things again.
Outside of leave accrual (which is still inferior compared to the EU), benefits and pay for the average government worker aren't really any better at this point. Plenty of supervisors pulling 100-150K+, but that usually also includes having to live in high cost of living areas like DC.
The best benefit is you can't be terminated without reason. It takes real, documented issues to terminate someone. Very good job security.
On GS and GG plans you get both cost of living adjustments (depends on wh or Congress) and you get regular raises with step increases.
The leave is excellent. 4-8hr/2 weeks. And 4 hours sick, no cap. They also can't deny leave without a reason and rescheduling.
Health insurance plans are pretty good. HDHP, CO pay, deductible, multiple agencies.
Pension is a big one. Being able to retire and have a pension, social security, and 5% matching savings plan (traditional and Roth) is pretty much unheard of.
You also probably have union representation depending on your agency.
Biggest downside is pay. If you're technical or very competitive you'll not make as much. There's a cap on civilian pay due to a stupid law saying you can't earn more than the vice president, so every rank is staggered below that. They really need to consolidate ranks below gs5. Those are poverty wages.
Pension is part of it, but having access to fed gov health insurance after you retire is bigger. My brother retired a FedGov critter and my IRA and 401k from years of corporate work will exceed his pension... But not his insurance.
Also jealous of his stability and the "retire at 45, start a new life" angle
Oof, that is a very good point. The retirement benefits are huuuuge. That said, I have very little trust that these benefits will not be whittled away to nothing by the time I qualify for them.
If they're still there by the time i hit retirement age (65 ish now, might be higher later), awesome, but I'm not going to make plans based on that assumption.
Yeah, I always forget about carrying the insurance over. My parents have quote a few complaints about Medicare.
How did he retire at 45? Did his agency approve VERA after 25 years?
Can't really fire contractors either. You'd have to get their PM to reassign them. I've never seen a contract that allowed the government to dictate the contractors hiring. That contractor might decide to fire the employee at government request but that isn't required.
I wouldn't say contractors in government offices are less common than government workers. I can't read the article but I'm assuming this is actually in USAID and not a contractor facility.
Edit: ah wait the blurb is different than the quoted text. It said "pressured to resign" and senior advisor. That's quite a bit different and I don't know who would actually resign unless they thought it would impact them returning to high profile private industry.
At least when I worked at the NIH there were far more contractors than FTEs, but other places might be different
He did something serious. He told the truth about Gaza. It's not like he did something minor, like sabotage the nation's postal network to try to throw the election.
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Tell the truth, get fired.
Or even openly plan to tell the truth, it seems.
Have plans to tell the truth, get fired.
Offer to not tell the truth after having pointed it out, still get fired.
The US government is weird.
this is more like openly trade ideas about the possibility of stating legal facts
The only real cancel culture.
Is this a first amendment violation because this person is a govt employee?
Government employees in their official capacity can be limited, but not in private capacity. So if he's speaking officially on behalf of his government employer they can decide what he can say.
He was also a contractor. Not sure if that makes a difference.
'A single slide mentioned international humanitarian law in context of the health crisis in Gaza.'
“I wasn’t planning to stand up and yell ‘Israel is committing genocide,’” Smith said. “I was stating the laws.”
I don't understand resigning versus letting them fire you and then taking it up with a lawyer.
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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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