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Comment by aezell | Hacker News Reader

If you go to the USAJOBS site and search for National Weather Service, you get about 270 results. If you then limit that to jobs that are open to the public, you get just under a hundred jobs. So, I think both sides are telling A truth.

The NWS says there are around 270 open positions. That is demonstrably true.

The union is saying there are about 700 open positions. They might think there are vacancies for which requisitions have not yet been made.

Perhaps, therein lies the discrepancy. And it speaks to the rest of the odd financing and accounting discussed in the article.

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Are union jobs like that really all open to the public on sites like USAJOBS? I was just reading an article about how many them are handed out through connections to other union members, it's usually the same group of tight-knight union workers on every public works project.

> many of them are handed out through connections to other union member

Government hiring doesn’t work like that. Positions are usually open to everyone (or at least US citizens) or only existing staff.

So there's an agency that provides oversight that makes sure that the jobs were handed out to people who applied through USAJOBS and verifies they were available to the general public? It's not the same few private companies getting the same jobs every time and handing out union cards to a small group of tight-knit people? Typically family and friends of the original group? And they don't limit each hire to a narrow specific role defined in the RFP so they can hire more people for a job that a single multi-talented person can do?

That's good. I wouldn't want that to be the case like in other industries with artificial scarcity and special power structures.

There are many positions that are in effect only for those already in the employ of the contract. Either lateral or promotion but only for an 'insider'. This is not particular to this single contract but can be applicable for all contracts depending on many factors.

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