The USDA’s Scientific Department Has Unionized. Will the USDA Care?
Last August, USDA chief Sonny Perdue proposed moving the Economic Research Service—the USDA’s science arm—out of Washington.
The decision was seen by many, including those in the ERS, as a deliberate attack on government scientists, who have repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration. On June 13th, the USDA announced the planned relocation site for these scientists: Kansas City. The scientists are not giving up quietly.
Perdue has spun the decision to move the ERS as being both a benefit financially and as an effort to get agricultural scientists closer to farm country. Scientists have bristled at this: the ERS works extensively with other governmental agencies, all of which are located in Washington, and a move will serve to isolate them. Despite the availability of moving packages, a large percentage of ERS employees are unable or unwilling to uproot and move across the country, which could result in a greatly diminished staff—all factors creating a weakened scientific organization.
On May 9th, the ERS voted overwhelmingly to unionize, with 138 votes in favor and only four against. They are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest such union, but the damage has already been done. Dozens have quit, with reporting by the Washington Post indicating that few are willing to relocate to Kansas City.
The union has, since being formed, announced that they view the relocation plan as a deliberate attempt to undermine their scientific work, saying that Perdue’s reasons are spurious and that a relocation will severely hamper the ability of these scientists to do their jobs.
On June 19th, the union demanded a halt to the relocation plans until the USDA sits down to address several points, including a guarantee on moving fees, an incentive payment for moving, and a civil rights impact analysis. That last seeks to find out how the move would affect employees who may have trouble finding other jobs, including those without college degrees.
The USDA has not said much about the union. “We will work with this group of employees just as we work with all USDA employees,” said Perdue in a statement.
The ERS is a vital part of the USDA and the government as a whole. It is responsible for collecting and analyzing census data and survey data on farmers, looking into how policies will affect the environment, discovering the needs of rural communities, analyzing trade, and updating food safety information. Pretty much anything that needs data analysis and relates to either food or rural America? That’s the ERS’s purview.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].The USDA’s Scientific Department Has Unionized. Will the USDA Care?
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
July 9, 2019
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
It,seems the trump administration is for rolling back all regulations concerning polluting the environment especially any regulations affecting oil,gas and coal including fracking which in my opinion is not safe especially in urban areas. Nuclear waste is a whole other story much more dangerous when your consider the length of time it, takes to become harmless.People who live anywhere near any nuclear waste site are still getting cancer from exposure in Russia , Japan as well as the United States.