Will President Obama give feds a Christmas present on Dec. 26?
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Version 0 of 1. The weather feels like spring and it’s not even Halloween, but Christmas is on the minds of 35,000 federal workers and counting who have signed an online petition to get President Obama to declare the day after the holiday a bonus day off. The petition posted to the White House’s “We the People” page asks the administration to “Declare an executive order for all executive departments and agencies to be closed 12/26/2014, for a four-day weekend.” The justification is straightforward: There’s precedent for this, and federal workers say they deserve a free day off after last year’s sequestration-triggered furloughs and three years of pay freezes: “Federal Employees have dealt with pay freezes and furloughs over the past few years. Giving federal employees an extra holiday on Dec. 26th, 2014 would be a good gesture to improve morale of the federal workforce. Some bases are forcing their employees to take leave or LWOP because of base shut-downs on this day. This is also consistent with past practice. President Obama provided a full-day Monday Dec. 24, 2012 and a half-day off on Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009. President George W. Bush provided a half-day holiday on Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2002, as well as several full days off the day before or after Christmas: Tuesday, December 24, 2001, Thursday, December 26, 2003, Tuesday, December 24, 2007, and Thursday, December 26, 2008. We urge President Obama to issue an executive order.” — Whitehouse.gov “Federal Employees have dealt with pay freezes and furloughs over the past few years. Giving federal employees an extra holiday on Dec. 26th, 2014 would be a good gesture to improve morale of the federal workforce. Some bases are forcing their employees to take leave or LWOP because of base shut-downs on this day. This is also consistent with past practice. President Obama provided a full-day Monday Dec. 24, 2012 and a half-day off on Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009. President George W. Bush provided a half-day holiday on Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2002, as well as several full days off the day before or after Christmas: Tuesday, December 24, 2001, Thursday, December 26, 2003, Tuesday, December 24, 2007, and Thursday, December 26, 2008. We urge President Obama to issue an executive order.” — Whitehouse.gov Federal workers already have a paid vacation day on Dec. 25, which falls on a Thursday. Shutting down the government for a day costs roughly $100 million. But the day after Christmas is arguably not a busy work day for Americans. That’s one view. The other is that federal employees already have too many perks, and giving them a four-day weekend could antagonize critics of perceived government largess. The White House would have to figure out how to cover the shifts of hundreds of thousands of “essential” employees and whether they would get holiday pay. The petition was created on Oct. 20 by someone identified only as S.K. of Oklahoma City. As of Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., it had cleared 34,628 signatures. It needs 65,372 by Nov. 19 to get an official response from the White House: A 100,000 threshold. The president gave federal workers a half-day off on Christmas Eve when Dec. 24 fell on a Thursday in 2009, so they got a three-day weekend. But a similar petition to get Christmas Eve off last year — when the holiday fell on a Wednesday — failed when the Office of Personnel Management told employees to report to work as usual. President George W. Bush granted a half-day once on a mid-week Christmas Eve. Four times he gave the federal workers full days off immediately before or after Christmas. Two created four-day weekends; the others fell in the middle of the week. An administration official said in an e-mail that the White House would respond to the petition if it clears the 100,000-signature mark. “Every petition that crosses the threshold is reviewed by the appropriate staff and receives a response,” the official wrote. Whatever the president decides, even if 100,000 federal workers tell him they want Dec. 26 off by Tuesday, the day of the midterm election, he’s not likely to announce anything before the election is over. |