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Showing posts with label Shutdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shutdown. Show all posts

Friday, October 4, 2013

Federal Shutdown: Is Workers' Compensation Ready for Tropical Storm Karen?

With a Federal Government in a shutdown, will the State Workers' Compensation system be ready for a natural disaster? The public announcements indicate that FEMA will have to ramp up, but will other Federal agencies be ready and reactivated in time? Workers' Compensation will be stressed with emergency responders who become ill and injured as a result of hurricane related activities. One year almost to the Superstorm Hurricane Sandy and recovery efforts are still continuing. Time will tell.......

State emergency management officials on the U.S. Gulf Coast have been assured that the recent shutdown of the federal government will not affect the Federal Emergency Management Administration's response to Tropical Storm Karen.The storm is expected to come ashore late Saturday or early Sunday on the Gulf Coast. A hurricane watch has been issued from southern Louisiana to the western Florida Panhandle.
A hurricane watch means that winds exceeding 74 miles per hour (119 kilometers per hour) are possible within 36 hours. Although Karen could strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the Gulf Coast, forecasters aren't certain that it will maintain that strength until it makes landfall.
Meanwhile, emergency management agencies in the area are conferring with FEMA officials as they prepare for the storm.
A call to FEMA's External Affairs office in Atlanta was answered by a recording saying that its staff had been furloughed because of the federal government shutdown. Calls to FEMA offices in the Gulf Coast region were answered by staffers not authorized to speak on the record. But state emergency management officials said they are talking to FEMA personnel and the  federal agency is preparing to respond to the storm.
"Our director locally has been in touch with FEMA, and he's received every assurance that FEMA will support us," said Mike Steele, communications director for the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in Baton Rouge.
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Thursday, October 3, 2013

Government Shutdown

Todays' post is from USA.gov and it reflects the impact of the shutdown on workers' compensation programs, both directly and indirectly, throughout the nation.

Below, find an overview of some of the government services and operations that will be impacted until Congress passes a budget to fund them again. For detailed information about specific activities at Federal agencies, please see federal government contingency plans.
  • Vital services that ensure seniors and young children have access to healthy food and meals may not have sufficient Federal funds to serve all beneficiaries in an extended lapse.
  • Call centers, hotlines and regional offices that help veterans understand their benefits will close to the public.
  • Veterans’ compensation, pension, education, and other benefits could be cut off in the case of an extended  shutdown.
  • Every one of America’s national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, will be immediately closed.
  • New applications for small business loans and loan guarantees will be immediately halted.
  • Research into life-threatening diseases and other areas will stop, and new patients won’t be accepted into clinical  trials at the National Institutes of Health.
  • Work to protect consumers, ranging from child product safety to financial security to the safety of hazardous waste facilities, will cease. The EPA will halt non-essential inspections of chemical facilities and drinking water systems.
  • Permits and reviews for planned energy and transportations projects will stop, preventing companies from working on these projects. Loans to rural communities will...
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Federal Workers Nationwide Protest Government Shutdown

The US Capitol is photographed through a chain fence in Washington, DC, on September 30, 2013 (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque).

The US government shut down at midnight as the Republican-controlled House continued to demand changes to Obamacare, and in response workers all across the country are protesting the GOP’s actions.
Nearly 100 government employees rallied in downtown Chicago at Federal Plaza on Monday to protest the shutdown, the first in seventeen years, calling Congress’ actions, “political theater of the absurd.”
Fox Chicago reports workers carried signs reading: “Jobs Not Furloughs.”
When asked about the impact of a shutdown, a spokesperson for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office responded vaguely: “I think we all know what that looks like.”
The Chicago Tribune offered some more specifics: “The early prevailing wisdom is that the Chicago area should be able to weather a short-term shutdown largely unscathed but that the impact will become more apparent the longer federal funding is suspended.”
And the Sun-Times reports that if employees considered “non-essential to national health safety and security” are furloughed, it will be “more difficult or impossible” to get a passport, a gun permit, or a new Social Security card.
Chris Black, who workers for the EPA, told CBS that a shutdown would do more than just furlough workers. A shutdown will also affect the jobs they do.
“I’m involved...
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