The Federal Employee Survival Blog
Cut through the jargon and get the clarity you need to stay a step ahead of agency politics. Each article unpacks new policy shifts, court rulings, and workplace trends, then turns them into actionable tactics—so you can head off discipline, invoke EEO or whistleblower protections with confidence, and keep your documentation airtight. We also archive our most popular social-media explainer threads here, giving you the same insights followed by more than 150,000 people online even if you never scroll on those sites. Read, prepare, and keep your federal career firmly in your control.
If you received a RIF notice this fall—or even heard rumors of one—the new guidance tied to the Continuing Appropriations Act changes your legal footing in very real ways. Under that law, agencies can...
When a shutdown ends, most people assume the crisis is over. But for GS-9 and above federal employees—especially those handling audits, contracts, IT systems, compliance, or mission-critical deadlines...
When a shutdown ends, most federal employees feel immediate relief—pay will resume, operations restart, and uncertainty loosens its grip. But there’s a lesser-known risk that surfaces the very first d...
When a shutdown finally ends, relief often mixes with uncertainty. Many federal employees wake up wondering two things: When will the paycheck land? and Am I safe? This week’s reopening answers both q...
Federal employees have lived through 41 days of uncertainty—missed paychecks, frozen operations, and a flood of RIF notices that never should have been issued. With the Senate’s passage of a bipartisa...
After more than twenty thousand hours representing federal employees, one mistake stands out above all others: trying to face a disciplinary proposal alone. Agencies have trained attorneys, internal p...
Few things unsettle career federal employees more than seeing someone punished for doing the right thing. The recent case involving an FBI official who questioned a senior leader’s use of a taxpayer-f...
A growing number of agencies, especially the Department of Defense, are fast-tracking removals by handling “performance” issues under Chapter 75 instead of Chapter 43. Both chapters have always existe...
A newly leaked “Department of War” memo is changing how the Department of Defense handles removals for “unacceptable performance.” It directs supervisors and HR to act with “speed and conviction,” cut...
Good news for federal employees: a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction halting all shutdown-related Reduction in Force (RIF) actions. This means agencies cannot issue or finalize RIFs th...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost roughly a third of its workforce in just eight months. According to recent reporting, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) dismisse...
A newly leaked document confirms what many suspected: some in Washington saw the recent shutdown not just as a funding lapse, but as an opportunity to reshape the federal workforce. According to Polit...
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