NWS Internal Investigation Report Reveals
NOAA Leadership’s Secret Attack on the NWS Workforce
(October 10, 2012) NWSEO has obtained a copy of the secret 61 page internal NOAA report into the alleged financial mismanagement of the National Weather Service prepared earlier this year. This document, from which names and other information was redacted as alleged “invasions of personal privacy” reveals that senior NOAA leadership blames NWS employees for the agency’s financial problems and has ordered the NWS to trim its workforce and to find another “business operations model.” The report states on page 15:
“[W]itnesses familiar with the NWS budget have stated that increases in labor costs and constraints on management’s ability to reshape the workforce have impinged on the flexibility in managing the NWS budget and in handling NWS budget deficits. Indeed, NOAA senior leadership has believed for many years that the NWS business operations model is unsustainable because it relies too heavily on labor, and that high labor costs negate the flexibility created by the LWF [Local Warnings and Forecasts]. Accordingly, NOAA senior leadership had instructed NWS to no longer create new positions, so they must find ways to move forward with the same number of employees, or less.”
NWSEO thanks its members for the strength that their membership provides. NWSEO would like to remind all NWS employees that the union is the only organization with the ability to lobby Congress and the Administration to preserve NWS jobs, promote better working conditions and career promotions for NWS, and participate in collective bargaining.
-NWSEO-