I see where ISN’s Director of OPS is now furloughed. Did ISN finally fold under?
What about the rest?
Perspecta
CACI
SCIS
What’s going on? Someone here knows…
I was told by my TL that we (CACI) were all going to be gone if a certain thing didn’t happen by last week. It didn’t happen. They have since started telling people to apply for unemployment and requested they manifest and return all case materials, even from open cases. That is all the foreshadowing you should need. If you look at CACI’s financials, the stock is doing fine, but all of the profit and announcements are about the I.T. side of the company. That side can easily work remotely or send a person or two into a server room alone to do what they need to, but not us. Constant Evaluation, reductions in source interviews for some case types, and now a severe slow down in new cases has been the nail in the coffin. I think someone will be left doing this work at the end, but it won’t be my company. Maybe it will just be federal in the end.
So far Perspecta is still chugging along. As far as I know the last round of layoffs was in early January. Not sure what the future holds though
Scis reviewers have had reduced hours for awhile, probably because they over hired. The field was given reduced hours about 3 weeks ago, some have 24 and others have 32, but “it’s only temporary” supposedly. A friend at Perspecta said their hours have not been reduced. Another friend at DCSA told me twice over the last year that mgt. told them Perspecta was getting out of the BI business which now appears to be false.
Boston- I find your statement VERY strange. My friends at CACI have not been told that
Everything about all this is very strange and all cloaked in a cloud of secrecy. My friend with ISN had no idea that Russ, the Director of OPS was gone. Their last all call meeting two week ago was conducted by Alvin, the company CEO and owner and he acted like things were ok and there wouldn’t be any further furloughs through this and then The voice of ISN, Russ, is suddenly gone apparently according to his LinkedIn profile.
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It is business as usual for me at CACI. We haven’t been told or alerted to anything abnormal.
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I doubt Perspecta is getting out of the BI business, the company holds quite a few different BI contracts. Either way there has not yet been word of working reduced hours
The only reason I listened for one minute to the idea of Perspecta leaving the BI (which only meant DCSA to DCSA folks, not alternate contracts) was because Perspecta won a big millions or billion dollar DOD I.T. contract that had to do with CE. I believe this was about 1 or 2 years ago and other companies were protesting Perspecta being granted the I.T. contract and still being given fieldwork on the same contract. I haven’t heard anything about that for awhile so nothing probably came of the protest.
My TL said that there weren’t enough cases for the Tier 1 workers and that a third of the team was already on directed to apply for unemployment benefits. I spoke to a teammate who is a level 3 or 4, who also works RB / Excal, and she was told there wasn’t enough work for her to keep billing 40 hours and she will have to take LWOP. I am simply going by what I was told. I have no reason to give bad information to a SNCO.
CACI “furloughed” all investigators who weren’t making their stats 2 weeks ago (everyone was ranked nationwide and if you didn’t make your stats, you were furloughed with no notice). Most were given a few days or the rest of the week to finish up the work they had open. After that, everything was manifested and mailed back in. Yes, some of the cases may have been 1/2 completed (they weren’t supposed to start any new work). Since all fieldwork could be done remotely, all work was spread out across the country with no regard for ORG/region. If you ask me, this is better than SCIS’ approach to reduce all investigator hours because the furloughed CACI investigators could apply for unemployment (and get the extra $600 per week Trump money). There is no denying that work is down. Nobody is hiring and thus there are no background investigations being pumped into the system…but there is still some work coming in. And, we just got word that DCSA is going to send back any cases with items that were written off due to Covid to be reworked when the country opens back up (I am guessing not all cases will be sent back, just ones with issues or cases seriously lacking coverage). In the BI world, this is great news as it is more work for us to do (or redo). It will delay cases, so not so good news if you need clearance.
With most states beginning to open back up, I think CACI’s actions were a little too late to have any effect as the work will have to move back to local ORGs so that in person work/attempts can be made once again.
(edited for typos)
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Boston. Very interesting but not surprising. I am a former USIS AND CACI investigator/federal investigator/and now thankfully and completely out of this screwed up industry! The lack of communication from CACI management is unbelievable but typical. For anyone in this industry as a contractor I would highly suggest you run as far away and as fast away as you can! The federal side is not as bad but it’s still pretty screwed up.
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Wow - as an F/T CACI BI, this is news to me. I have no work and very limited hours, but have not been told to return cases (or told anything official). I have been on unemployment for about a month.
Does the writing have to be any brighter??
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SCIS has a slow trickle of cases coming in. Every two to three days maybe two new cases added to my load - DCSA stuff.
No details about when the modified schedules will return to normal. Just a guess, nothing known on this but It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if SCIS uses the COVID-19 situation as an excuse to create a new normal - FT is now 32 hrs per week or something like that - something better for the shareholders: less employment wages to pay out but the same productivity expected.
The stage for such a guess seems to be getting a backdrop in place. “Encouragement” emails have been pushing the gold standard along with the CARES act team looking find resolutions for the displaced or impacted workers.
Is a return to 40 per week only a dream?
Not sure anything can improve until everything reopens.
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After today’s email a coworker and I said the exact same thing about the emails setting the stage. Hope it’s wrong so I don’t have to go back to Keypoint/Perspecta haha but I will in a heartbeat. In fact I should apply now to beat the rush… bye bye scis.
Can contract BI’s file for unemployment under the current CARES act for 1099’s? Even if work is still coming in, but at a dramatically reduced rate?
The recorded message for CA UIB says you can apply for unemployment because of covid even if you don’t qualify for UIB under the regular rules. Not sure what that means exactly but it sounds like you can apply if all states are the same.
Regarding Perspecta, received word today that they are reducing our field work hours down to 35 per hour week but will be allowing us to complete training to make up for the remaining 5 hours.
As bad as some people think Perspecta is, at least they seem to be trying hold on to their BI work force as much as possible while competitors have had many layoffs.
However, my case load as of the last couple of weeks have been pretty bare bones, I’ve only had about 3 - 5 cases at any given time since the beginning of April. They basically explained that DCSA is barely processing new cases because of a limited work force due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Good luck to everyone out there
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Yes you can file for unemployment. In NY, the process is you file for regular UI, if you are denied, them you can file for Stimulus UI. I was already collecting regular UI after a layoff for GDIT, but when I started 1099 work, I claimed the one or two days a week I had worked and was still able to collected a reduced UI as it was considered part-time and making less than the $540 weekly UI. When the Stimulus UI started, I was automatically enrolled.
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