2d ago

USDA chief says agency is trying to fill key jobs after paying 15,000 to leave

www.npr.org /2025/05/07/nx-s1-5389922/usda-deferred-resignation-federal-workers-brooke-rollins

In testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins confirmed that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is now looking to fill critical positions, after agreeing to pay more than 15,000 employees' salaries and benefits through September in exchange for their resignations.

"We are actively looking and recruiting to fill those positions that are integral to the efforts and the key frontlines," Rollins told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

But the need to fill positions so soon after letting people go has raised questions, including from Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"So you let people go and you're looking for new people to fill the positions that they had experience in?" Murray asked.

19 comments

My friend works for USDA. She says her supervisor left, and had a team of 11. Now it’s only 4 of them.. and her work has doubled.

Reminder that you should be forcing republicans to the margins of society using all means available to you.
- I will as soon as I can find a Republican. For now, I'll just marginalize fascists pretending to be Republican.
  
  It should be obvious to everyone at this point that this is what the Republican party has always been.
  
  It's disingenuous, at this point, to pretend there is a distinction.
- I wish I could. The only maga hat wearing fascist in my job site acts too nice and friendly so I'll look like a raging hysterical idiot if I openly act like a dick to him. People around me either don't care or only want to keep the peace in their immediate area. Every day we get more awful news from the administration, hear about how ICE abducts random people, and see how much we've alienated ourselves in the international community. Despite all this we still collectively act like everything's fine. It's maddening.
  
  Lol, no.
  You should totes bring it up.
  "Hey, I know you are a nice person-- did you vote for American children undergoing cancer treatment being deported? Are you okay with this?"
  
  Either be silent and accept your fate when they run out of others, or keep fighting

Paying a premium for ridding yourself of institutional knowledge and existing experience, then paying again to fill the gap with ignorant novices, then paying yet again to train them to former levels of productivity while paying for the difference in the interrim: That's government efficiency, baby!
I mean, why pay for one thing once, when paying for the thing you already had before you threw it out four times over is clearly four times as good - just like how a double standard is twice as good as a boring singular standard. As Big Balls from DOGE would no doubt say: "That's math".
- It’s even worse. That institutional knowledge and loyalty was purchased with a reputation for employer stability.
  Now you have neither and you can’t buy back that trust.
  
  That's a very good point.
- They don't want experienced people in regulator positions. They want their people in regulator positions. I would be surprised if a majority of new hires did not have ties to Christian Nationalism.
- They said they were going to run government like a business. Businesses do this shit all the time.

Project 2025.
Word for word.

The entertaining question would be: what do the salaries of the new employees look like, compared to the old ones? I'd suspect that the administration is thinking they can fire a well experienced, but expensive employee and hire on a cheap replacement. However, I also suspect many of those positions are fairly specialized and they are going to end up paying to get rid of all that experience and then end up paying a premiums to hire someone with the needed experience for the position.
- I'm a contractor, and I can't express it enough how much a competent Govie makes a difference on project success. My last Govie was amazing, unfortunately he got promoted. He got replaced with 2 new govies that were formally contractors, and they are the worst, they are dumb micro managers that don't even understand how our program operates. One of them litterally sends us emails of his Gemini questions and responses with highlights. The other leads and I are very competent and have all worked for 10+ years on our project, and he sends us fucking AI responses about shit he doesn't understand about shit we do understand. Our morale has been absolutely crushed, and I have a running chat with my other leads which is just a non stop bitch fest about how fucking useless they are.
- I’m curious to see how many of those 15,000 get hired back on as consultants with corresponding inflated rate, then again we are being taken over by Nazis who have no qualms about deporting cancer ridden children so maybe they’ll just fold and let the market sort it out like supply side Jesus always preaches

Only a fool would take a government job unless they had no choice. Even if I were considering it, I would insist in negotiations for pay upfront or some kind of severance agreement.
For many years, the status quo was that you underpaid and provided an extremely stable position but in exchange received more loyal and often more experienced employees that knew how to work with the complex bureaucratic systems. Now, there’s no reason to take those jobs.
There’s no reason to take these jobs, not without a significant pay bump or other equalizing factor.

19 comments