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The National Weather Service (NWS) Employees Organization, the labor union representing employees of the NWS, recently released a statement denouncing the NWS for its severe understaffing issue in offices around the country. The union emphasized that the NWS has not had full staffing levels in over seven years and called for management to finally address the hundreds of vacant positions it refuses to fill. Given the slew of catastrophic extreme weather events hitting California in the form of disastrous wildfires and hitting Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the form of three deadly hurricanes, the union feels that this understaffing problem is not only unacceptable in terms of how the NWS operates, but also incredibly irresponsible given that an understaffed weather service cannot adequately forecast and alert the public to impending extreme weather. While NWS representatives maintain that they would never jeopardize public safety in operations decisions, the union asserts that management is taking too high of a risk in its inefficient and possibly dangerous hiring practices.