Federal Hiring Freeze Will Hit Rural Areas and Communities of Color the
Hardest
Monday, February 27, 2017 By Elizabeth Grossman, In These Times | Report
President Donald Trump issued a memorandum last month freezing the hiring of
civilian employees throughout the federal government with the exception of
military personnel and "to meet national security or public safety
responsibilities." The order specifies that contracting "to circumvent the
intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted." In addition, it directs
the Office of Management and Budget to come up with a plan to reduce the
size of the federal government through attrition. Under this order, except
in "limited circumstances," any federal agency jobs vacant as of noon on
January 22, 2017 cannot be filled.
The hiring freeze is item No. 2 on Trump's "Contract with the American
Voter," highlighted as a measure "to clean up the corruption and special
interest collusion in Washington, DC." But economic analysts say it will do
nothing to boost the overall job market. And a look at those who will be
hardest hit by the freeze shows that it will disproportionately impact rural
communities and communities of color.
According to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), more
than 85 percent of federal workers live and work outside of Washington, DC.
Among the states that rely most heavily on federal jobs are Alaska, Wyoming,
Mississippi, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Montana, Alabama and New Mexico. These
jobs are lifelines in places where there are few other options.
How will blocking the hiring of a school bus driver for the Tsiya Day School
in Zia Pueblo, New Mexico, address corruption? A special education teacher
at the Ojibwa Indian School in Belcourt, North Dakota? A Department of
Interior park guide in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, or a Veterans
Administration food service worker in Chillicothe, Ohio? All are current job
openings the president's action will leave unfilled.
The freeze, said public services workers union AFSCME (American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Employees) president Lee Saunders in a
statement, "will make federal agencies less effective, hurting people and
communities that depend on efficient public services. It may mean unsafe
workplaces aren't inspected, lower quality health care for our veterans, and
longer wait times at Social Security Administration offices."
"This really affects small communities," says Andrew Stettner, senior fellow
at The Century Foundation. He points out the order will also affect a lot of
veterans, who have priority for hiring in federal agencies.
"This is a short sighted and bad policy," says Stettner. "It's a giant axe
that comes down and ends up hurting the kinds of communities Donald Trump
said he was going to support."
Ballooning Federal Employment a Myth
Press secretary Sean Spicer has said the hiring freeze "counters [the]
dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years." But according
to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the federal government
workforce made up of civilians has remained more or less consistent for the
past 50 years. While there have been ups and downs in federal hiring, if
postal service workers are included and US population growth is factored in,
"the federal government has barely grown in recent years," explains
PolitiFact. Currently, less than 2 percent of American workers are federal
employees.
Loss of access to jobs under a federal hiring freeze will hit black
Americans, and black women, particularly hard. Office of Personnel
Management statistics show that blacks make up a higher proportion of the
federal workforce than the private sector, and more than half of these
workers are women.
Also among the hardest hit are communities that rely on federal land
management agencies -- among them the National Park Service, Fish and
Wildlife Service, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management -- and the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service. Communities that rely on
federal prison and veterans center employment will also suffer potential job
losses.
On February 1, Democratic members of the US Senate Committee on Indian
Affairs wrote to Trump urging him to exclude from the freeze federal
agencies providing essential services to Native communities, especially the
Indian Health Service (IHS), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Bureau of
Indian Education (BIE).
"Even before the hiring freeze was announced, Federal agencies that provide
these services were struggling to recruit and retain a qualified workforce,"
wrote the senators, led by committee vice-chairman Tom Udall.
As the letter explained, IHS medical facilities, which provide primary and
preventative health care to about 2.2 million American Indians and Alaska
Natives, predominantly in rural areas, regularly face 20 percent or greater
vacancy rates for doctors, nurses and other clinical staff. On February 17,
the Department of Health and Human Services responded saying that IHS
clinical staff would be exempt from the federal hiring freeze. The committee
Democrats called this "a step in the right direction."
Other community programs may still be subject to the freeze. On January 31,
the Office of Personnel Management issued guidelines about exemptions but
they have not yet been clarified. "We have no idea how broadly these
agencies will be able to construe that guidance. It does not appear to
answer the question of whether positions like teachers or other education
personnel could receive an exemption," Udall's communications director,
Jennifer Talhelm, explained in an email. "We remain hopeful that President
Trump will reconsider the hiring freeze as it applies to all Indian
programs," the Democrats said in a statement.
At the same time, according to Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER) executive director Jeff Ruch, staff shortages are also
a serious problem throughout the agencies responsible for public lands and
wildlife management. In a PEER survey, 84 percent of national wildlife
refuge managers said they don't have enough staff to meet their "core
conservation mission."
"This freeze means that the thin green line protecting America's natural
resources will get thinner and, in some places, it will snap," Ruch in a
statement. "How this will affect fire crews, especially on wild land fires,
is of particular concern," he said in a phone interview. "As a management
tool, it seems kind of crude and misguided."
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) called the hiring freeze "a critical first
step toward reining in Washington bureaucracy." But even Chambers of
Commerce in Texarkana, Texas and Charleston, South Carolina have expressed
concern about what the freeze will mean for local employment.
Freeze Will Hamper Economic Recovery
A consistent theme in the 2016 election was the inequity in economic
recovery since the Great Recession. The federal hiring freeze won't help,
says Stettner.
"Government employment hasn't recovered as much as private -- at all levels,
local, state and federal . You have a president saying he wants to create 25
million jobs in five years but if you don't want to include government
employment, they're just wrong on what it takes to grow an economy,"
Stettner says of the Trump administration.
At the same time, Trump's base of support was those who identified
themselves as struggling to find good, living- and family-wage jobs. Federal
government jobs, with benefits that include health insurance, retirement
savings programs, paid holidays and sick leave, typically fit that
description. With the hiring freeze, "government workers are being pitted
against other workers," says Stettner, a tactic organized labor advocates
say has been used to undermine unions.
"One way to see this is a kind of distribution of wealth issue," says Loyola
University College of Law professor Robert Verchick.
If the federal government steps back further as an employer, communities
that need these benefits most are likely to suffer. Government jobs, says
Stettner, "are a strong set of public goods."
Originally published at InTheseTimes.com.
ELIZABETH GROSSMAN
Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products,
Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital
Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, Watershed: The Undamming of
America and other books. Her work has appeared in numerous publications,
including Scientific American, Yale Environment 360, The Atlantic, Salon,
The Washington Post, The Nation and Mother Jones.
Her coverage of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster was recognized as among
the best 2010 workplace health and safety writing by the Southern California
Coalition for Occupational Safety & Health, and her 2010 YES! Magazine story
on water rights received a Media Freedom Foundation-sponsored award. Chasing
Molecules was a Booklist's 2009 "Top 10 Science & Technology" book and won a
Gold Nautilus Award for Investigative Reporting.
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Federal Hiring Freeze Will Hit Rural Areas and Communities of Color the
Hardest
Monday, February 27, 2017 By Elizabeth Grossman, In These Times | Report
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. President Donald Trump issued a memorandum last month freezing the
hiring of civilian employees throughout the federal government with the
exception of military personnel and "to meet national security or public
safety responsibilities." The order specifies that contracting "to
circumvent the intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted." In
addition, it directs the Office of Management and Budget to come up with a
plan to reduce the size of the federal government through attrition. Under
this order, except in "limited circumstances," any federal agency jobs
vacant as of noon on January 22, 2017 cannot be filled.
. The hiring freeze is item No. 2 on Trump's "Contract with the
American Voter," highlighted as a measure "to clean up the corruption and
special interest collusion in Washington, DC." But economic analysts say it
will do nothing to boost the overall job market. And a look at those who
will be hardest hit by the freeze shows that it will disproportionately
impact rural communities and communities of color.
According to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), more
than 85 percent of federal workers live and work outside of Washington, DC.
Among the states that rely most heavily on federal jobs are Alaska, Wyoming,
Mississippi, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Montana, Alabama and New Mexico. These
jobs are lifelines in places where there are few other options.
How will blocking the hiring of a school bus driver for the Tsiya Day School
in Zia Pueblo, New Mexico, address corruption? A special education teacher
at the Ojibwa Indian School in Belcourt, North Dakota? A Department of
Interior park guide in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, or a Veterans
Administration food service worker in Chillicothe, Ohio? All are current job
openings the president's action will leave unfilled.
The freeze, said public services workers union AFSCME (American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Employees) president Lee Saunders in a
statement, "will make federal agencies less effective, hurting people and
communities that depend on efficient public services. It may mean unsafe
workplaces aren't inspected, lower quality health care for our veterans, and
longer wait times at Social Security Administration offices."
"This really affects small communities," says Andrew Stettner, senior fellow
at The Century Foundation. He points out the order will also affect a lot of
veterans, who have priority for hiring in federal agencies.
"This is a short sighted and bad policy," says Stettner. "It's a giant axe
that comes down and ends up hurting the kinds of communities Donald Trump
said he was going to support."
Ballooning Federal Employment a Myth
Press secretary Sean Spicer has said the hiring freeze "counters [the]
dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years." But according
to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the federal government
workforce made up of civilians has remained more or less consistent for the
past 50 years. While there have been ups and downs in federal hiring, if
postal service workers are included and US population growth is factored in,
"the federal government has barely grown in recent years," explains
PolitiFact. Currently, less than 2 percent of American workers are federal
employees.
Loss of access to jobs under a federal hiring freeze will hit black
Americans, and black women, particularly hard. Office of Personnel
Management statistics show that blacks make up a higher proportion of the
federal workforce than the private sector, and more than half of these
workers are women.
Also among the hardest hit are communities that rely on federal land
management agencies -- among them the National Park Service, Fish and
Wildlife Service, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management -- and the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service. Communities that rely on
federal prison and veterans center employment will also suffer potential job
losses.
On February 1, Democratic members of the US Senate Committee on Indian
Affairs wrote to Trump urging him to exclude from the freeze federal
agencies providing essential services to Native communities, especially the
Indian Health Service (IHS), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Bureau of
Indian Education (BIE).
"Even before the hiring freeze was announced, Federal agencies that provide
these services were struggling to recruit and retain a qualified workforce,"
wrote the senators, led by committee vice-chairman Tom Udall.
As the letter explained, IHS medical facilities, which provide primary and
preventative health care to about 2.2 million American Indians and Alaska
Natives, predominantly in rural areas, regularly face 20 percent or greater
vacancy rates for doctors, nurses and other clinical staff. On February 17,
the Department of Health and Human Services responded saying that IHS
clinical staff would be exempt from the federal hiring freeze. The committee
Democrats called this "a step in the right direction."
Other community programs may still be subject to the freeze. On January 31,
the Office of Personnel Management issued guidelines about exemptions but
they have not yet been clarified. "We have no idea how broadly these
agencies will be able to construe that guidance. It does not appear to
answer the question of whether positions like teachers or other education
personnel could receive an exemption," Udall's communications director,
Jennifer Talhelm, explained in an email. "We remain hopeful that President
Trump will reconsider the hiring freeze as it applies to all Indian
programs," the Democrats said in a statement.
At the same time, according to Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER) executive director Jeff Ruch, staff shortages are also
a serious problem throughout the agencies responsible for public lands and
wildlife management. In a PEER survey, 84 percent of national wildlife
refuge managers said they don't have enough staff to meet their "core
conservation mission."
"This freeze means that the thin green line protecting America's natural
resources will get thinner and, in some places, it will snap," Ruch in a
statement. "How this will affect fire crews, especially on wild land fires,
is of particular concern," he said in a phone interview. "As a management
tool, it seems kind of crude and misguided."
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) called the hiring freeze "a critical first
step toward reining in Washington bureaucracy." But even Chambers of
Commerce in Texarkana, Texas and Charleston, South Carolina have expressed
concern about what the freeze will mean for local employment.
Freeze Will Hamper Economic Recovery
A consistent theme in the 2016 election was the inequity in economic
recovery since the Great Recession. The federal hiring freeze won't help,
says Stettner.
"Government employment hasn't recovered as much as private -- at all levels,
local, state and federal . You have a president saying he wants to create 25
million jobs in five years but if you don't want to include government
employment, they're just wrong on what it takes to grow an economy,"
Stettner says of the Trump administration.
At the same time, Trump's base of support was those who identified
themselves as struggling to find good, living- and family-wage jobs. Federal
government jobs, with benefits that include health insurance, retirement
savings programs, paid holidays and sick leave, typically fit that
description. With the hiring freeze, "government workers are being pitted
against other workers," says Stettner, a tactic organized labor advocates
say has been used to undermine unions.
"One way to see this is a kind of distribution of wealth issue," says Loyola
University College of Law professor Robert Verchick.
If the federal government steps back further as an employer, communities
that need these benefits most are likely to suffer. Government jobs, says
Stettner, "are a strong set of public goods."
Originally published at InTheseTimes.com.
Elizabeth Grossman
Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products,
Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital
Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, Watershed: The Undamming of
America and other books. Her work has appeared in numerous publications,
including Scientific American, Yale Environment 360, The Atlantic, Salon,
The Washington Post, The Nation and Mother Jones.
Her coverage of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster was recognized as among
the best 2010 workplace health and safety writing by the Southern California
Coalition for Occupational Safety & Health, and her 2010 YES! Magazine story
on water rights received a Media Freedom Foundation-sponsored award. Chasing
Molecules was a Booklist's 2009 "Top 10 Science & Technology" book and won a
Gold Nautilus Award for Investigative Reporting.
Related Stories
Jobs or Inequality? That's No Choice at All
By Richard Eskow, Campaign for America's Future | Op-EdFederal Government as
Employer: High Road or Bottom Feeder?
By Dean Baker, Truthout | Op-EdFederal Disobedience: Why We Must Support
Federal Worker Noncooperation
By Adriana Calvarezi, Truthout | Op-Ed
Show Comments
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