FEDERAL FURLOUGH TERRAIN Washington Post writes, “Every U.S. Park Police officer will be off the job for 14 days – but the national parks they patrol will be staffed. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will shut down for seven days starting in May, after concluding that staggering furloughs for 9,000 employees would create too much paperwork. Customs and Border Protection agents are waiting to hear whether the 14 unpaid days they were told to expect will disappear as they did for meat inspectors and federal prison staff. And the Pentagon announced Thursday that it would cut its planned furlough days from 22 to 14. This is the uncertain and uneven landscape of the furloughs that in less than three weeks will begin to affect more than half of the nation’s 2 million federal employees. The budget ax was supposed to fall across the board but hardly does so, federal workers are learning. And the situation is quickly splitting the workforce into haves and have-nots, inflaming labor-management tensions and straining agency resources as everyone struggles through the details.”
02
Apr 2013
