****Last spring, when the current administration decided to do a more than thorough Spring Cleaning of government workers, I was more than a bit sad. It’s a lousy job market; it was a surprise massacre, vital work was disrupted, and careers were smashed. Within six months, many were emptying their retirement accounts to cover health care and other needs, and years of ongoing government work were wiped away with no plan for how it might be replaced.
I was sad because I had suffered through the “Reinvention of Government” by “Billy Bob” Clinton. Clinton similarly decided to take an axe to government. However, due process was followed in that case. We were given notice, our rights were observed, but in the end we too were dumped into a slow job market, the work that had been the focus of our careers was abandoned, and in my case the entire facility that I had spent years developing was shuttered. All my staff were laid off, collections dispersed, and research? I have no idea what happened to all the research! So there was a deep and abiding sense of sadness and anger at watching an even larger tragedy roll out.
Survive? Yes, I survived. After almost two years of fruitless search for a professional job. I went to work at a UPS hub loading parcels and freight. I was fifty, and the younger guys I was working with marveled that grandpa was loading beside them. But UPS offered a wage, and very importantly, a benefit package including healthcare that my family needed. My government 401k was largely drained.
I suspect that some of the victims of DOGE will suffer a similar fate to mine. The damage is not only to the family budget – it goes beyond resorting to Spam or other economy foods because the budget is shot. Your career is damaged. In my case, I was fifty, and mid-career changes can be hard under the best of circumstances.
But in the case of the recent job elimination, you are dumped and start a job search with your former employer, alleging that the elimination had been due to inefficiencies and incompetence. Hell! One day, you’re a GS-12 mid-grade and the next, you’re trying to make a buck doing a podcast.
Find the strength that you didn’t know you had? For me, it was sometime around the six-month mark at UPS. I had taken a shower and was shaving in front of the mirror when I noted that I had bulges in my chest and arms that I had never had before. Yes, there I was at age fifty with “definition” in my musculature for the first time. In other ways, I marked new beginnings by starting two part-time businesses and vowing to never, ever, work for the government again.
What the fate of many of the eliminated government workers will be, I do not know. Eventually, I assume, most will develop new strengths and competence.
But gosh! I bet that, as I have, they won’t forget. And at the ballot box, through opinion, or otherwise, they won’t forget the way they were treated, nor who was responsible. As the old saying goes, “paybacks are a bitch!”
****MAGAT ALERT – you won’t like this post, so go away.
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I admire your determination. I used to work with a guy who had worked loading trucks for UPS and he quit as 32 years old because he said the job was too physical. I’m not sure I share your optimism with voters not forgetting. The people who write the narratives are too adept at reminding people what side they’re on.
I can’t speak to the issue of the electorate as a whole, but I’d bet that those directly affected by the mess won’t easily forgive or forget.
As to UPS, after a while they offered to promote me into management, and I “took the tie.” But on my last day as a Teamster, and an old loader took me aside and gave me some advice, ” Don’t forget where you came from.” I took his advice and was a pretty effective supervisor, but I worked just as hard as the guys who worked for me and made sure they were taken care of. When I retired, the Teamsters I worked with threw me a retirement party.
Have you ever asked yourself whether it would be a good idea for governments to employ people? I mean, people who don’t already have a job? So that’s actually part of the role of government? I’m undecided.
We don’t have to worry about that for much longer, they’ll only employ AI’s soon.
We don’t often hear the voices of those who lives were shattered by Doge’s actions. It’s a reality all too close to all working corporate or government jobs. Frightening. Good on you for surviving.
You are right they are a silent bunch.
Things got very hard for a large percentage of employed people here because the San Luis Valley is MOSTLY wildlife refuges, national forests, a national park, BLM. It struck me because what that axe did was damage the economy of a place that was (and still is) made up mostly of supporters of HWSNBN.
In a patron/clintage system that sort of betrayal would be the end of the relationship. What’s going on here is something totally else. But I think it’s not unrelated to the sorts of things that happen in entrenched authoritarian systems – I’m thinking of Franco’s Spain.