<![CDATA[GESTA IFPTE LOCAL 29 - Blog]]>Fri, 01 May 2026 13:36:32 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[Statements on Artemis II]]>Fri, 01 May 2026 16:00:00 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/statements-on-artemis-iiBeing able to witness the Artemis II voyage to the Moon, led by the exemplary Artemis II crew (including mission specialist Christina Koch, who began her career at NASA Goddard) was an awe-inspiring and for many, life-defining event. The mission captured the world’s attention, not only because of the technical and scientific feats NASA was able to accomplish in returning humans to orbit and observe the Moon, but because of the rare human and cosmic perspectives the mission brought to us. The journey was a very timely reminder of the importance of NASA’s role in space exploration and space science for the US and the entire world. We can all feel pride in belonging to such a NASA team. On the occasion of the Artemis II launch, IFPTE leadership and GESTA’s President spoke on the historic journey, and emphasized the role of NASA’s federal workforce in making the mission possible.
GESTA President, Trysh Moton noted that, “As Artemis II launches, it highlights decades of dedication by NASA workers and union members who helped design and build the spacecraft for the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. The mission is a source of pride, featuring a historic crew that includes the first person of color, first woman, and first Canadian to circle the Moon. It represents a major achievement made possible by thousands of NASA employees and partners, marking an important milestone for NASA, the nation, and the world.”

IFPTE President Matt Biggs said "We extend our congratulations to the thousands of IFPTE members at NASA whose quiet dedication and world-leading expertise contributed to today's launch of Artemis II. From the laboratory to ground control to the Orion capsule, the women and men who made today's historic moment possible are bound by one important fact: they are all civil servants.  We wish the crew a productive journey and safe return to Earth, and we look forward to more historic victories for scientific advancement and the federal workforce. While some seem to believe that our best interest as a nation lies in undermining science, stripping NASA’s talented and dedicated workforce of their worker’s rights, and outsourcing NASA's important work, we know that America's place as a global leader in innovation will only be realized by redoubling our commitment to space exploration and the people who make it possible.”   
]]><![CDATA[A Recent Representational Win]]>Fri, 01 May 2026 02:13:55 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/a-recent-representational-winGESTA recently helped a GESTA member who informed us that they had received a  proposed letter of removal from the federal service.  GESTA’s grievance committee jumped into action and met with our colleague to gather the facts and to hear their side of the story. We helped this member collect their thoughts and formulate an effective written response that refuted each claim against them. In the end, GESTA was able to assist our member in negotiating a deal which allowed them to resign with a clean record in lieu of the original proposed  termination.
]]><![CDATA[Goddard Facilities Spending]]>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 01:54:01 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/goddard-facilities-spendingGiven the ongoing significance of facilities budgets to NASA Goddard, we want to highlight some of the published data on the funding amounts involved in sustaining Goddard operations and facilities over the years.
We found some of this financial information reported in Goddard Annual Reports. These annual reports include high level financial information about how Goddard spent funding that year, including spending grouped into a category called 'Management & Operations’ . The spending in this category reported  from 2024 going back to 2014 is shown in the blue curve in the graph below.
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In the red curve above we calculated the inflation adjusted spending amounts using the Bureau of Labor statistics inflation calculator to convert to current (February 2026) dollars. For added context a second plot below shows the total Center spending over the same timeline  in real dollars (blue) and inflation adjusted dollars (red).
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The graphs show how a 'flat' budget actually indicates a significant budget decrease due to inflation. The trends over time clearly shows the Center has lacked the necessary funds to maintain facilities, safety and mission support compared to support levels in past years. In addition, given Goddard and NASA’s aging facilities (called out in a 2024 National Academies report as in need of additional funding), the gap between available funding and real facilities needs is likely magnified.

What we do find difficult to understand from this data, is how the completed and ongoing Goddard building closures substantially address these real budgetary issues. A justification provided by Center management for carrying out the closure of a third of our campus buildings was a promised savings of $10M/year in operation costs and $64 million in deferred maintenance costs, though there has been no transparency on how these cost savings estimates were calculated and whether they fully counter the substantial costs of the moves and divestments.  Putting these amounts in context with the above spending amounts, a yearly cost savings of $10M/year in operating costs would represent only 2% of the 2024 total Center Management and Operations budget. The $64M in deferred maintenance savings would represent approximately 14% of the 2024 spending budget in this category, and that even assumes it were to be spent over a single budgetary year.  How can such small relative potential savings justify such disruptive impacts to Goddard’s workforce, facilities and capabilities?
]]><![CDATA[The FY27 PBR & Another Whistleblower Report]]>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 01:34:30 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/the-fy27-pbr-another-whistleblower-reportOn April 3rd, the Administration released the 2027 President’s “skinny” budget, and several days later NASA released the full NASA FY27 Presidential budget request (PBR). You can download and read the budget request from NASA’s website. The FY27 budget request provides an eerie feeling of déjà vu. Like the FY26 PBR it again proposes existential cuts to NASA and to NASA’s Science budget specifically.

As The Planetary Society’s Casey Dreier points out in a recent Guardian interview, the FY27 NASA PBR is “a baffling piece of political ideology from an alternate universe in which they didn’t suffer an overwhelming defeat of that proposal just months ago…” and is even “seemingly contradictory with a number of statements that NASA leadership said a few weeks ago at the Ignition event”. The American Astronomical Society, the American Geophysical Union and The Planetary Society have some breakdowns and discussion of the details of budget proposal. Bill Nye also gives a wonderful defense of NASA and lays out the PBR issues in a recent interview with ABC News. 

There are strong indications already that these proposed budget cuts will once again be rejected by Congress. Even before the budget proposal was released the bipartisan Planetary Caucus made up of 103 house members announced their full support for NASA’s science budget. And in a hearing on April 22nd, the House Science committee questioned Administrator Isaacman on the budget proposal, where both Republican and Democrats members indicated that they would again reject the proposed cuts. You can view the full hearing and Issacman’s responses which cover a full range of topics here.

GESTA contributed a number of suggested questions to this bi-partisan panel for the House Science Committee hearing and the upcoming (April 30th) hearing with Isaacman in front of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS). Our feedback included emphasising the importance of Earth science-driven missions, sustaining internship programs (including Pathways and OSTEM) and STEM education. We emphasized the public pronouncements from Isaacman supporting the rebuilding of NASA’s workforce need to be paired with internal career pathways — internships, term conversions to permanent, and supporting postdocs and contractors who want to move into the civil service.  We emphasized the importance of  investing in inherently governmental functions and in fundamental research and technology development, rather than assuming these areas can be fulfilled by the private sector. Furthermore, we highlighted recent developments at GISS - Goddard Institute of Space Studies - Goddard’s premiere science and research facility in Manhattan, which was shuttered a year ago by DOGE. And that our subject matter experts (SMEs) there are now to be placed in mediocre cubical spaces with minimal access to the research tools, servers, and technology needed to effectively continue their work. We acknowledged that while it was excellent to hear Administrator Isaacman speak to how Earth science observations provide valuable research to agriculture, commerce, and public safety sectors, our SMEs who can do this valuable work are being sidelined. We asked Congressional members to help bring this awareness to the administrator. 

We are cautiously hopeful that NASA and Goddard leadership might change course from the destructive actions they took last year to implement the Deferred Resignation Program and the President’s budget request before Congress weighed in. However, it is now well known that the Office of Budget Management (OMB) has been playing a heavy role (likely illegally in many cases) in NASA and Center funding and program decisions. And Isaacman’s defense to the House Science Committee in the hearing that NASA has always prioritized resources based on the lesser of the proposed Presidential, Senate and House budgets was not reassuring.

Bolstering such concerns, a second whistleblower report released April 17th by the minority members of the House Science committee details some of the damage done last year due to NASA’s pre-implementation of the FY26 PBR, highlighting three case studies. It is notable that Goddard leadership and missions bear a significant burden of the responsibility for the actions and impacts in two of the three case studies described, including the Advanced X-Ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) mission and the Joint Agency Satellite Division (JASD). The report concludes “NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center fatally undermined the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) proposal after its mission class was zeroed out in the FY26 PBR.”

GESTA is cautiously optimistic that the severe actions taken last year by NASA and Center leadership might not be repeated, but we will continue to the best of our ability, along with all of you, to seek accountability, rebuild, and fight any continuing efforts aimed at weakening NASA’s  workforce and its Congressionally-supported missions and programs.
]]><![CDATA[Union Plus Benefits]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/union-plus-benefitsWe want to make sure our dues-paying GESTA members are aware of one of the additional benefits of your union membership through our international Union, IFPTE which  includes access to discounts on financial services, health, travel, shopping and other benefits through Union Plus. You can find more details of the benefits at the Union Plus Website: www.unionplus.org. From the website you can create an account to begin accessing your benefits. When creating an account select “IFPTE” as your union from the drop-down menu.
]]><![CDATA[Goddard Library Lawsuit]]>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:00:00 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/goddard-library-lawsuitA lawsuit, which GESTA has joined as a plaintiff, has been filed in response to the Goddard research library closure. The motion seeks emergency relief. Greenbelt News and Review recently published a story on the library closure and lawsuit and interviewed attorney Zachary Weil who represents GESTA and the other plaintiffs. In the article Weil speaks to some of the lawsuit arguments.
]]><![CDATA[Membership Passes Resolution Condemning Killing of Pretti]]>Sun, 29 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/membership-passes-resolution-condemning-killing-of-prettiGESTA membership recently passed a resolution to condemn the killing of Alex Pretti, a fellow federal employee and federal union member, by federal immigration agents. You can read the GESTA resolution text here. As noted, copies of this resolution are in the process of being sent to the international leadership of IFPTE, members of Congress representing GESTA districts, other stakeholders, and the press
]]><![CDATA[Action: Comment on Proposed Performance Rating Changes]]>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:00:00 GMThttps://www.gesta-goddard.org/blog/action-comment-on-proposed-performance-rating-changesThe Trump administration and the Office of Personal Management (OPM) have proposed new regulations that would  limit the ability for NASA and other federal workers to obtain high performance ratings. A Government Executive article covers these proposed regulation changes which would require a forced distribution on employees ratings. The article describes the numerous issues with such a change noting that “agency representatives across government… nearly universally panned it in internal discussions, warning that its adoption would decrease employee performance and abandon merit systems principles.” The proposed changes are now out for public comments with public comments due by March 26th. A  strategy for these comments is to raise multiple unique concerns that will require a response. We encourage you to submit a comment here by clicking the green ‘Submit an Public Comment’ at the top of the page. For guidance on what makes a good comment on proposed rule changes, you can see this document (relevant advice starting on page 2)  from the Federal Union Network.
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