Doesn’t get much press here. Got some at Substack, though. I am going to shamelessly drive traffic there, because this needs publicity. Links are below, above the quote boxes.
Trusk has terminated telework at this Agency as with all others, forcing people to commute long distances, stand in long lines to clear security [don’t “oh boo hoo” me, read the article and LOOK AT THE PHOTOS.]
People can’t park, so they are being forced to return home, forbidden to work from there, being forced to use their accrued leave because The President And His Special Friend are clueless and malevolent.
This is an obvious setup for failure. FDA has made more use of telework than most [perhaps all] other Agencies, enabling them to hire very qualified people without having to relocate them, and to have a vastly expanded workforce without having to build or lease vastly expanded office space.
That SAVES MONEY. But Trusk and Mump don’t care. It’s not about saving anything; it’s about fabricating excuses to destroy things.
Do you eat? Do you vape? Do you take any meds, ever, for anything, whether Rx or OTC? Do you intend to get vaccinated at any time in your future? Do you have one or more dental implants? Hip or knee replacements? Artificial heart valve? Use a CPAP?
Do you think you might ever use, or need, any of those things during your lifetime?
Then this is going to affect you.
Here are a couple of pull quotes. The main Substack is here insidemedicine.substack.com and this article is here insidemedicine.substack.com/... .
Again, go look at the photos. They expect people to work on sensitive, complex information at picnic tables in the buildings’ atriums.
On his first day in office, President Trump instructed federal agencies to “terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person” as soon as possible. Today, less than two months later, over 10,000 FDA employees are expected to report to White Oak, the agency’s headquarters in Silver Spring, MD.
Oh, the traffic jams on Route 29 South are going to be spectacular.
The first problem is that the FDA’s main campus is simply not equipped for this kind of workforce. “There are over 10,000 of us, but there are only 6,000 parking spots. There aren’t enough offices. There aren’t enough chairs,” an FDA employee told me.
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf corroborated that, adding that the policy did not serve a useful purpose. “Like a lot of things with these politicians, it’s all about the slogans—no analysis or logic,” he told me yesterday.
Thinking? That’s “woke”, we don’t DO that. Planning? That would interfere with “breaking things”.
So, FDA employees are expecting chaos today. “People are talking about driving in at 5 or 6 a.m., just to get in,” one said. “Leadership is saying ‘we know that this is a physically impossible task,’ but you have to come in and do it. They feel that we have to perform the infeasibility of it. We need to show that line of cars stuck in a building.”
The problem is that once the parking lots are full, employees who drove in may just have to turn around and go home. “We are being told if we put a good faith effort to get into the building but can’t, we will have to tell our supervisors that we need to be on leave from the day.”
I haven’t come close to the Fair Use limit, but I want people to go to the site, read the article, look at the photos.
AND SPREAD THE WORD.
THIS IS A SETUP FOR FAILURE. AND IT IS MORE ABUSIVE AND UNPROFESSIONAL THAN ANYTHING I EVER SAW IN THE WORST CORPORATION I EVER WORKED FOR.
Even if you don’t give a hoot about the FDA per se*, this vicious stupidity is coming for the things you do care about. Kind of like the price of eggs was a harbinger of worse things to come across the whole economy, for those paying attention. Please, pay attention this time…
*yeah, it’s “per se”, Latin, meaning “as such” [contextually] or ”itself” [literally]. Not “per say”. The dangers of homonyms, yet again.
