Alexander Smith’s PowerPoint presentation doesn’t appear designed to court controversy. The slides, focused on declining maternal health in Gaza, cite public health data from the United Nations and World Health Organization. His employer, the U.S. Agency for International Development, had selected him to share it at the government agency’s Global Gender Equality Conference.
But just before the conference, an issue of contention emerged.
A single slide mentioned international humanitarian law in context of the health crisis in Gaza. USAID staff cited the slide and discussion of international law as potential fodder for leaks, documents and emails Smith shared with The Intercept show. Despite Smith’s willingness to make revisions, his presentation was eventually canceled. On the last day of the conference, he found himself out of a job.
“I thought it is really obscene that misinformation can go out freely out into the world [about Gaza], but I can’t talk about the reality of starving pregnant women,” said Smith, who worked as a contracted senior adviser at USAID on gender and material health. “We can’t even whisper about that in a conference on that topic.”
In the US, many government workers are contractors, who are easier to fire. Full time employees of the government are less common, and as you said are harder to fire, get better benefits, etc.
It should be noted that this shift has happened in the last 30 years or so. Before that civil servants were the norm and contractors the exception. Civil service used to be a very good job that had some of the best benefits you could find, including some of the last remaining pension programs. You could live a very decent middle class life being a civil servant. Contractors are no cheaper for the government but it does move the liability from them to a 3rd party private employer. And now all the money goes to the business men who get the contracts and pay their employees a pittance with nearly no benefits.
Everything you said is still true. As long as you are an office worker that’s all correct. The government does still contact out most work but most offices still have plenty of government employees. It’s just now the government is more of an oversight and managerial role for 80% of it’s employees. Besides things like hr and finance. It’d be nice if the government actually did things again.
Outside of leave accrual (which is still inferior compared to the EU), benefits and pay for the average government worker aren’t really any better at this point. Plenty of supervisors pulling 100-150K+, but that usually also includes having to live in high cost of living areas like DC.
The best benefit is you can’t be terminated without reason. It takes real, documented issues to terminate someone. Very good job security.
On GS and GG plans you get both cost of living adjustments (depends on wh or Congress) and you get regular raises with step increases.
The leave is excellent. 4-8hr/2 weeks. And 4 hours sick, no cap. They also can’t deny leave without a reason and rescheduling.
Health insurance plans are pretty good. HDHP, CO pay, deductible, multiple agencies.
Pension is a big one. Being able to retire and have a pension, social security, and 5% matching savings plan (traditional and Roth) is pretty much unheard of.
You also probably have union representation depending on your agency.
Biggest downside is pay. If you’re technical or very competitive you’ll not make as much. There’s a cap on civilian pay due to a stupid law saying you can’t earn more than the vice president, so every rank is staggered below that. They really need to consolidate ranks below gs5. Those are poverty wages.
Pension is part of it, but having access to fed gov health insurance after you retire is bigger. My brother retired a FedGov critter and my IRA and 401k from years of corporate work will exceed his pension… But not his insurance.
Also jealous of his stability and the “retire at 45, start a new life” angle
Oof, that is a very good point. The retirement benefits are huuuuge. That said, I have very little trust that these benefits will not be whittled away to nothing by the time I qualify for them.
If they’re still there by the time i hit retirement age (65 ish now, might be higher later), awesome, but I’m not going to make plans based on that assumption.
Yeah, I always forget about carrying the insurance over. My parents have quote a few complaints about Medicare.
How did he retire at 45? Did his agency approve VERA after 25 years?
Can’t really fire contractors either. You’d have to get their PM to reassign them. I’ve never seen a contract that allowed the government to dictate the contractors hiring. That contractor might decide to fire the employee at government request but that isn’t required.
I wouldn’t say contractors in government offices are less common than government workers. I can’t read the article but I’m assuming this is actually in USAID and not a contractor facility.
Edit: ah wait the blurb is different than the quoted text. It said “pressured to resign” and senior advisor. That’s quite a bit different and I don’t know who would actually resign unless they thought it would impact them returning to high profile private industry.
At least when I worked at the NIH there were far more contractors than FTEs, but other places might be different