At first glance one would think Wow you work for the Federal Government. What a great career! You get great benefits and get to serve our country at the same time. Then there is the other side of the coin" the private sector. Private sector employers and employees have a rather skewed perception on public sector employment and employees. In the last decade if you were to ask the average private sector employee in the DC Metro area for their opinion of federal government employees, you would most likely hear "federal employees are ungrateful, lazy, get paid for doing virtually nothing, have great benefits, are almost impossible to fire, and complain all the time." (based on reports done 2010). While there may be actual employees that fit that description, by far and large the vast majority of federal employees are hard working, take pride in their jobs and the fact they are serving their country; and within the DoD supporting the warfighter.
Federal employees shoulder a great responsibility in that they are accountable not only to their Agency's but more importantly they are accountable to the U.S. taxpayer, versus a shareholder in the private sector, and as such also have a fiduciary responsibility to speak up whenever and wherever they witness fraud, waste, abuse or gross mismanagement; especially those in the acquisition arena. The reason being is that feds in the acquisition arena are responsible for spending the bulk of government funds.
In my thirty-one plus years in the government I have witnessed great good, greater bad, and truly egregious behavior, treatment and actions by management officials of all tiers. I have been both subtlety and openly asked to ignore or break regulations, statutes and laws in the performance of my duties handling contracts. The requests have ranged from circumventing the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) and steering and awarding contracts to a specific vendor, to ignoring personal services contracts, to ignoring unallowable costs and approving improper invoices. I have been threatened with personnel action for refusing to approve improper invoices against Federal Acquisition Regulations. I have been subjected to extremely severe long term emotional abuse for refusing to ratify unauthorized commitments for a Region that habitually engaged in unauthorized commitments, having 17 in one year and for attempting to correct major findings and weakness for a Region that failed their last three acquisition management reviews. I have suffered continued severe emotional abuse for just attempting to do my job with integrity to the best of my training and ability. This long-term emotional abuse left me scarred and with diagnoses of diverticulosis, TMJ, post traumatic stress disorder, severe major depression, and with anxiety and panic disorders.
The abuse ranged from being forced to take my severely disabled sister with me on business travel shortly after having reported for duty, to threats and being placed in a room between two male co-workers while they and my supervisor intimidated me through the use of raised voices and close proximity tactics, to having me sit next to and refusing to move a male co-worker, with a history of intimidating female co-workers and who had several days before angrily appeared in the doorway of my cubical because I asked a question regarding his need to converse over my head with the individual who sat on the other side of my cube. This combined with the constant pressure to violate regulations and commit an illegal act led to my being placed off work by my doctors due to the emotional and physical effects caused by the work related stress. During this time I filed a workers compensation claim for the aggravation of my medical conditions as well as complaints with the EEOC and MSPB. When I returned to work I was subjected to an extremely hostile work environment and subsequently was placed off work again due to the increased work related stress. When I was released back to work on temporary limited duty my supervisory chain refused to allow me to return to work, saying if I could not return to work on full duty I could not return.
The most common responses of people upon hearing these things is "you should have reported the situation?" or "why didn't you just leave?" My reply to the first response is "I did." My response to the second is "I did, it followed me, and they engineered it in such a way as to effectively prevent me from leaving." The latter I will explain shortly.
Management officials have subjected me, along with thousands of other federal employees, to this type of repetitive treatment in our respective agencies; for me it was the Department of Interior and the Department of Defense. Workplace discrimination and workplace bullying are all too common within the federal sector. It spans all agencies and its offenders come from all walks of life. Yet rarely is anything ever done to the offenders, rarely are they ever held accountable. Therefore this type of abusive treatment continues to permeate our federal workforce and the offenders, knowing they will not be disciplined, come to believe they may discriminate and bully with impunity.
Six years ago if you had told me that it was possible for a manager in a federal agency to openly and maliciously discriminate against and/or bully an employee to the point of making them seriously ill; that it was possible for a manager and agency to foster and encourage a mob mentality directed toward an employee because they stood up for themselves, refused to commit an illegal or unethical act, fulfilled their fiduciary duty, or spoke out against injustice to others; AND that executive leadership, after notification, would turn a blind eye to such treatment without action of any kind I would have said it was not possible, maybe in the private sector but not in the federal government. Two years ago if you had told me that after retaliation for filing for family medical leave, filing a workers compensation claim, or filing an EEOC or MSPB claim was rampant in the federal government and that an agency could or would systematically harass and retaliate against an employee in such a way and to the point where that employee and their family end up homeless I would have given the same answer. Further if you had said to me there was no justice for federal employees and the EEOC and MSPB despite their mandates, were in fact pro agency; and that the federal courts and U.S. Attorney's office routinely used callous and unethical tactics against federal pro se filers in the name of zealousness, such as sending the employee to an unlicensed physician to be evaluated, or a federal judge dismissing a case because an employee refused to go to an unlicensed physician in an unmarked office I would have vehemently argued against it. However I would have been wrong. As unbelievable as these things sound, they are true and if it had not happened to me I would not have ever believed it possible, would not have believed our government could, let alone would, be guilty of such egregious behavior. Then again one only has to go back about forty years to realize our government has no qualms of using its citizens as guinea pigs for nuclear testing in the Nevada desert or testing the effects of syphilis in Tuskegee, Alabama.
My severely disabled sister and I are now homeless due to the actions of the managers in my supervisory chain. All are culpable in either direct action or their inaction in failing to put a stop to the harassment and punitive retaliation. The agency has effectively made sure that I am unable to support my sister and myself by cutting off my pay but since I am still technically employed I cannot apply for unemployment nor do I qualify for any social services. If not for the generosity of our church and others we would be sleeping in the car. Unfortunately that may still be the case as the weeks pass.
It's not the first time our Government has done this and I would bet unfortunately it will not be the last. U.S. Marine Veteran Oliver Mitchell was made an example of and subject to similar punitive retaliation for daring to speak up about the egregious treatment, or lack thereof, of our veterans and he is now homeless as well.
Enough is enough. It is time for our elected officials to put a stop to the rampant abuse of federal employees. Abuse levied upon them for doing what they have been asked to do and expected to do - report fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.
Next - How the Department of Defense Systematically Engineered Our Being Homeless; and
Collusion or the Appearance of Impropriety - Games the Agency's, EEOC, MSPB and Courts Play
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