Trump Hiring Freeze Has Chilling Effect On Austin Workers Who Had Already Accepted IRS Jobs

AUSTIN, TX — Eager to start his new job at the Internal Revenue Service later this month, Terry Flemings thought the just-implemented hiring freezes ordered by Donald Trump wouldn't impact him. After all, he had passed all the tests, successfully gone through a series of interviews and had even been given documents telling him his start date, work schedule and the level of pay.

He was wrong. On Tuesday morning, Flemings—who would've been working out of the IRS building at 3651 S Interstate 35 Frontage Rd. in South Austin— had a rude awakening, a voicemail alerting him the job was no longer available: "The Internal Revenue Service extended a firm job offer to you for the position data transcriber...." a subsequent email read. "This notification is to inform you that as a result of the President's order on Jan. 23, 2017, freezing all federal civilian hiring, IRS must place an immediate hold on firm job offers."

It's not you, IRS officials added, it's the Trump administration: "This rescission is due to issues beyond the IRS control and not a reflection on you."

On Monday, Trump made good on an October campaign promise to implement hiring freezes on all vacant federal government positions, with the exception of "...the military, public safety and public health," he said at the time. The freeze was implemented amid a perception of a "dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters ahead of the edict—an assertion met with wide skepticism by political pundits.

Flemings, 29, had kept up with the news, but he thought he was safe after accepting the data transcriber job he ultimately was offered.

"I saw it coming," he told Patch in a telephone interview, referring to the hiring freeze. "But not for myself."

Currently living in the more affordable town of New Braunfels on the outskirts of San Antonio, he had hoped the $15.50 an hour job would aid in his upward mobility and re-settle in Austin where he lived back in 2008. But now, he's back to square one, he said.

"I woke up to a voicemail, and thought it was a reminder," he said, thinking the message was to alert of his start date for the offered job. "This puts me back to part-time work. This job was promised to me."

Flemings estimates at a least 200 people locally are now in the same bind as he. He arrives at the informed estimate via a rough calculus based on attendance at subsequent sessions at the local IRS office when prospective employees came in to provide requested documentation as part of their employment verification. There were about seven such sessions, with at least 30 people in attendance each time, he said.

Patch learned of Flemings' ordeal after close of business on Tuesday when he was contacted for a telephone interview. An attempt will be made this week to reach an IRS spokesman for comment.

In myriad ways, Flemings, a young African American man, embodies the type of worker pundits warned would be negatively impacted by Trump's promised hiring freezes.

"The move will disproportionately impact women, minorities and veterans—all of whom find a greater share of federal employment than in the private sector," the website ATTN reported. In 2015, about 35 percent of all Executive Branch employees were non-white and roughly 43 percent were women, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management, as ATTN reported.

The reason for the freeze also has come into question, with skeptics casting doubt on Spicer's claim it was implemented to curb "...the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."

Available data also contradict the claim. Federal employment has gone up by just 2.9 percent in the last three years, ATTN reports, with the total of workers virtually unchanged during the Obama administration, according to data on the Washington Post's Wonkblog. As a share of the total workforce, the government is as small as it's been since World War II, ATTN adds.

But Flemings doesn't have the luxury to focus on such statistical vagaries. Instead, he's focused on finding another job that pays at the same level ("which are hard to find," he said wistfully) while he looks for temporary employment. Before finding the IRS job, he had augmented his income as a driver for Lyft and Uber—ironically, work he can't secure locally after both ride-sharing services recently exited the local market amid disagreements with city officials on their business model practices.

Disappointed, Flemings is nonetheless keeping his chin up: "I'm going to be fine," he said. "I'll pay my taxes and live a good life. I've been in worse situations. But I never knew my government would do something like this to do me harm."

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