Editor’s note: WyoFile is allowing this worker to share their thoughts anonymously because of the extraordinary nature of the ongoing cuts at the federal level as well as the threat of retaliation against federal employees who speak out about the impact of those reductions.
Opinion
I am a federal employee. A civil servant. For now.
I have chosen to serve my country as a scientist for a federal agency. I have made substantially less money in this job than I could have in private employment. It has never been about the money, but about wanting our country to be better. I have always been proud of my federal work because it mattered.
My career has focused on guaranteeing citizens of Wyoming and the United States have access to information about water to ensure safe drinking water, management of irrigation rights, understanding how a year’s snowpack will affect the runoff, how floods will propagate downstream, and how the rivers can be used for recreation and maintaining a fishery. This is the career of one person, out of many thousands of federal employees in Wyoming who have been working to ensure our citizens benefit from the natural resources of our great state.
I did not choose this career to get rich. Let me be clear, no Federal employee gets rich by working for the government. Private citizens and corporations get rich from the federal government from contracts and grants.
Federal employees are often portrayed as having cushy jobs where they really never work. That must exist somewhere for the myth to have been born, but I have never seen it. Instead, I and many of my colleagues work unpaid on weekends and federal holidays to catch up with the never-ending workload put on us due to government cuts and higher output expectations. Yes, it is hard to get a hold of people in the government, but that is not because we are on a break, but because there are only half as many people to do the jobs we have been asked to do.
The uncivilized recent firing of probationary employees is a power move by the president without facts or a plan. (Editor’s note: A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to rehire fired probationary workers, though it was not immediately clear whether the administration would comply or appeal.) These newer hires are the best and brightest our country has. By firing them, we are massively reducing what our future could be. It is not paranoia to see that our future food security, national security, access to public lands, and overall way of life, among many things, are seriously in jeopardy.
Everyone should be worried about the gutting of the federal workforce. These people worked for our country doing important jobs that Congress has assigned and set aside and funds for us to fulfill, doing what is best for our nation. While we employees often feel undervalued and maligned, we are intelligent and resilient and will persevere, wherever we are forced to go. Our country, however, will suffer without the important work that we have been doing behind the scenes on your behalf.
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