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As many of you may have just noticed, I've changed my sig. That is because as of midnight tonight I no longer have a job where my private speech is protected. My 23 years of government service have ended on the alter of privatization. I still have a job, but what I essentially will do is lose most of my retirement - a defined benefit plan. I will have 16 years of compounded inflation reducing the value of what I receive, so I will take a hit of 38% to 56% of the value, at three per cent and five per cent inflation respectively (and if you believe with these deficits it's going to stay at 3%, I suggest you talk with DanS and Oerdin).
But wait, any Social Security I get will be reduced by 60% due to something called the Social Security Offset. So I am losing 38-56% of my retirement, and having 60% of my Social Security Tax essentially confiscated. I am just so ecstatically happy I could piss myself. Please note I still oppose a change of Social Security Insurance into Social Security Accounts. People can look beyond their narrow self-interest.
Now why has this happened? It seems that Lockheed-Martin has contributed 2 million dollars to the Republican party since the 1999-2000 election. Also, Mrs. Cheney was on the board of the company from 1994-2001 at $120,000 per year. Here's the link. From Wickipedia, her qualifications to help lead a fortune 500 company are "Born in Casper, Wyoming, she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors from Colorado College, Master of Arts from the University of Colorado, and a Ph.D. in 19th century British literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison."
So why does this affect me? Here's where it gets interesting. When Al Gore and the Republican Congress turned the FAA into a semi-private corporation, they freed the FAA from the normal federal procurement rules. Then when Bush took office, he declared that Aviation safety was no longer inherently governmental - which designation makes you a legitamate target for privatization.
So they decided to contract out my job. along with over 2000 others (this is the biggest contract of it's type ever made by the US government). To make sure it met the pseudo critieria of a related system called A-76 (after a government circular) they then added certain other functions not related to our job that they wanted to get rid of anyway, and shoved them into our units "budget", which they then did not require the bidders to do.
But wait, it get's better. When they did our Performance Work Statement, a fancy way of saying what we do, it turns out we do over 1000 items. No s**t. We have a extremely complex job with literally dozens of manuals we are responsible for following. Besides Aviation Weather, we engage in Search and Rescue, Airmen's Notification of things like disaster relief operations (i.e. post-Katrina), and well, I could go on for another thousand things. We essentialy do most Aviation Safety functions that are not involved with keeping aircraft seperated and not involved with inspections. It's hundreds of little things, akin to what an RN does in a Hospital. She may not do the surgery, but after it's done, you had better have a good nurse - if you don't, your chance of dying goes up. Aviation Weather is the second biggest cause of Aviation Accidents - which have a very high fatality rate.
So they declared they would only require the successful bidder to price up doing 250 core items. However, after Lockheed-Martin got our jobs, the FAA proceeded to add things back in. Why is this important?
Well, under this A-76 system, you can only bid out the jobs if there is a 20% savings. Over ten years, on a multi-billion dollar contract, the savings has dropped, before one bit of contract work was performed, from 2.2 billion to 1.2 billion. Guess what, we are now under 20% but that doesn't stop the FAA, because technically they are not actually doing an A-76 competition but their own custom one that they have constantly altered to make certain the jobs were contracted out..
The FAA had to organize an internal unit to bid on our own jobs, to give the employees a change to stay in government employment. Now at first they declared that they would adhere to the 20% savings. Then they declared 10% savings. Then they said technical factors. Guess what, the internal unit bidding on our jobs, which was organized to fail (they put a man in charge who had given us an IT nightmare), still managed to get within 9%. Oh, and the technically superior factors included computer programs rejected by the FAA three years ago, and computer programs not having the required certification to work with the National Airspace System. Oh, and a couple worked one in the FAA procurement office, with the spouse working at Lockheed-Martin on the competition - and the FAA was fully aware of this.
But - we aren't done yet. So the bid was challeneged. But unlike a normal A-76 competition, we had to go to non-binding arbitration where the appointed judge (selected by the FAA administrator) essentially took every statement made by the FAA at face value. So when we considered going to court (our union), all the findings of fact are just regurgitation of FAA documents. Courts are loathe to overturn the findings of fact by an arbitrator.
And then who makes the decision on the initial appeal? The FAA Adminstrator, who chose to create the competition, chose the personel to make the internal bid, who chose the arbitrator, and who gets to make the appeal decision.
It gets better. In the solicitation for companies, the FAA promised 80% retention of employees (It takes two years to get a competent person in our field, minimum) . So they have done everything to block our transfer within the FAA, and have also interfered with our transfering into other federal jobs (we've heard that other agencies have been warned to leave us alone, and that is confirmed by the following results). Only approximately 10% managed to get out. They gerrymandered our normal Reduction-in-Force and Seniority rules such that I cannot bump a secretary with six months service from her job three miles away. Note not that I wanted to, but to make the point that all the normal seniority rules were thrown out.
We do have an age discrimination lawsuit. The FAA admits the fact that 90% of us were over 40 was a factor, admits their hiring practices produced this, and then claims that supplies them with the necessary business excuse to justify age discrimination as per Mr. Scalia's decision of last year. So they admit that they are taking the retirements of roughly half of us, and that over 80% if those losing their retirements would have gotten them within the next four years, and that is Okay because they had a legitimate business reason. Happy happy joy joy.
So now my job has been privatized, I will lose roughly 50% of my retirement, I have been prevented from transfering into other jobs I was qualified for (I've been trying for three years), and I will retain pay for three years after which it is highly likely my pay will be cut by 25 to 50%. And I will have to sell my house at my own expense and move to Arizona if I want to keep my employment. The problem is that since the field is very specialized, it has very little application in any employment outside the FAA - or FAA contracts.
I do have an exit plan. I am going to go back to school while working full time, finish my degree (this time in aviation which my employee may pay for)- I dropped out while taking care of my mother and running a household for a family of six, and then get an RN or LPN at my own expense. After which I can go to work for the VA, they are desperate for nurses for obvious reasons. I also will not respond to questions after today reference this, for obvious reasons. BTW - we purchased our house and my wife became pregnant shortly before all of this was announced. F**k.
But wait, any Social Security I get will be reduced by 60% due to something called the Social Security Offset. So I am losing 38-56% of my retirement, and having 60% of my Social Security Tax essentially confiscated. I am just so ecstatically happy I could piss myself. Please note I still oppose a change of Social Security Insurance into Social Security Accounts. People can look beyond their narrow self-interest.
Now why has this happened? It seems that Lockheed-Martin has contributed 2 million dollars to the Republican party since the 1999-2000 election. Also, Mrs. Cheney was on the board of the company from 1994-2001 at $120,000 per year. Here's the link. From Wickipedia, her qualifications to help lead a fortune 500 company are "Born in Casper, Wyoming, she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors from Colorado College, Master of Arts from the University of Colorado, and a Ph.D. in 19th century British literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison."
So why does this affect me? Here's where it gets interesting. When Al Gore and the Republican Congress turned the FAA into a semi-private corporation, they freed the FAA from the normal federal procurement rules. Then when Bush took office, he declared that Aviation safety was no longer inherently governmental - which designation makes you a legitamate target for privatization.
So they decided to contract out my job. along with over 2000 others (this is the biggest contract of it's type ever made by the US government). To make sure it met the pseudo critieria of a related system called A-76 (after a government circular) they then added certain other functions not related to our job that they wanted to get rid of anyway, and shoved them into our units "budget", which they then did not require the bidders to do.
But wait, it get's better. When they did our Performance Work Statement, a fancy way of saying what we do, it turns out we do over 1000 items. No s**t. We have a extremely complex job with literally dozens of manuals we are responsible for following. Besides Aviation Weather, we engage in Search and Rescue, Airmen's Notification of things like disaster relief operations (i.e. post-Katrina), and well, I could go on for another thousand things. We essentialy do most Aviation Safety functions that are not involved with keeping aircraft seperated and not involved with inspections. It's hundreds of little things, akin to what an RN does in a Hospital. She may not do the surgery, but after it's done, you had better have a good nurse - if you don't, your chance of dying goes up. Aviation Weather is the second biggest cause of Aviation Accidents - which have a very high fatality rate.
So they declared they would only require the successful bidder to price up doing 250 core items. However, after Lockheed-Martin got our jobs, the FAA proceeded to add things back in. Why is this important?
Well, under this A-76 system, you can only bid out the jobs if there is a 20% savings. Over ten years, on a multi-billion dollar contract, the savings has dropped, before one bit of contract work was performed, from 2.2 billion to 1.2 billion. Guess what, we are now under 20% but that doesn't stop the FAA, because technically they are not actually doing an A-76 competition but their own custom one that they have constantly altered to make certain the jobs were contracted out..
The FAA had to organize an internal unit to bid on our own jobs, to give the employees a change to stay in government employment. Now at first they declared that they would adhere to the 20% savings. Then they declared 10% savings. Then they said technical factors. Guess what, the internal unit bidding on our jobs, which was organized to fail (they put a man in charge who had given us an IT nightmare), still managed to get within 9%. Oh, and the technically superior factors included computer programs rejected by the FAA three years ago, and computer programs not having the required certification to work with the National Airspace System. Oh, and a couple worked one in the FAA procurement office, with the spouse working at Lockheed-Martin on the competition - and the FAA was fully aware of this.
But - we aren't done yet. So the bid was challeneged. But unlike a normal A-76 competition, we had to go to non-binding arbitration where the appointed judge (selected by the FAA administrator) essentially took every statement made by the FAA at face value. So when we considered going to court (our union), all the findings of fact are just regurgitation of FAA documents. Courts are loathe to overturn the findings of fact by an arbitrator.
And then who makes the decision on the initial appeal? The FAA Adminstrator, who chose to create the competition, chose the personel to make the internal bid, who chose the arbitrator, and who gets to make the appeal decision.
It gets better. In the solicitation for companies, the FAA promised 80% retention of employees (It takes two years to get a competent person in our field, minimum) . So they have done everything to block our transfer within the FAA, and have also interfered with our transfering into other federal jobs (we've heard that other agencies have been warned to leave us alone, and that is confirmed by the following results). Only approximately 10% managed to get out. They gerrymandered our normal Reduction-in-Force and Seniority rules such that I cannot bump a secretary with six months service from her job three miles away. Note not that I wanted to, but to make the point that all the normal seniority rules were thrown out.
We do have an age discrimination lawsuit. The FAA admits the fact that 90% of us were over 40 was a factor, admits their hiring practices produced this, and then claims that supplies them with the necessary business excuse to justify age discrimination as per Mr. Scalia's decision of last year. So they admit that they are taking the retirements of roughly half of us, and that over 80% if those losing their retirements would have gotten them within the next four years, and that is Okay because they had a legitimate business reason. Happy happy joy joy.
So now my job has been privatized, I will lose roughly 50% of my retirement, I have been prevented from transfering into other jobs I was qualified for (I've been trying for three years), and I will retain pay for three years after which it is highly likely my pay will be cut by 25 to 50%. And I will have to sell my house at my own expense and move to Arizona if I want to keep my employment. The problem is that since the field is very specialized, it has very little application in any employment outside the FAA - or FAA contracts.
I do have an exit plan. I am going to go back to school while working full time, finish my degree (this time in aviation which my employee may pay for)- I dropped out while taking care of my mother and running a household for a family of six, and then get an RN or LPN at my own expense. After which I can go to work for the VA, they are desperate for nurses for obvious reasons. I also will not respond to questions after today reference this, for obvious reasons. BTW - we purchased our house and my wife became pregnant shortly before all of this was announced. F**k.
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