In the civil service, “provisional” doesn’t mean inexperienced

Imagine the following:

Person A, an expert in their field at a critical job with 30 years of experience, decides to retire. For six months, Person A trains person B (who has 20 years of experience of their own) how to do the critical job, and then retires. Person B takes over Person A’s job having learned the key bits of that 30 years of experience.

Trump gets inaugurated a few months later and then starts firing “provisional” employees. Person B is fired because they’ve been in their new position less than a year and are therefore in a  “provisional” position. And a critical job is left empty and the government loses a cumulative 50 years of experience.

This is happening right now, today, across government agencies tasked with protecting the people of the United States from contaminated food, dangerous products, organized crime, natural disasters, and more.

This is a terrible idea. If you think this is a good idea, imagine that Person A is the senior safety manager at an oil refinery and Person B was his deputy.

Still think it’s a good idea?

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