Consider This from NPR - After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

Episode Date: February 16, 2025

Across the country and around the world, tens of thousands of federal workers face uncertainty amid an unprecedented reduction and restructuring of the federal workforce.President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders — freezing hiring, ordering teleworkers back to the office, reclassifying employees and dismantling wide-ranging DEI programs.What will mass layoffs mean for federal workers and the government services they provide?For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Last week, more employees across the federal government received termination notices as the Trump administration forged ahead with its plan to drastically reduce the federal workforce. One agency hit hard by layoffs was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Taylor Sonny was a compliance examiner at CFPB based in Houston, Texas. My job is basically traveling across America physically to financial institutions and really examining making sure that they're treating people fairly. He'd been working at the CFPB for 11 months, just one month shy of the end of his probationary

period when he found out he'd lost his job. Everyone pretty much got fired via a mail merge form that was blasted out to everyone that in my opinion wasn't very accurate. It sort of touched on points of merit. However, you know, all of us have gotten very high regards in performance reviews and we're all very hardworking people. Sunny and his colleagues are weighing what happens next. There could be opportunities for recourse,

like filing an appeal if they believe they were fired for partisan political reasons. But for now, Sonny is processing the loss of his job and what mass layoffs could mean for the future of the CFPB. I was incredibly happy to be able to protect consumers on a federal level. It truly is a nonpartisan mission, which is unfortunate that it's been so heavily politicized. It's really something that the American people can't afford to lose. Across federal agencies, many who still have jobs are worried about what will happen next. Liz Goggin is a licensed clinical social worker for the Department of Veterans Affairs,

who lives with her family in Washington, D.C. After Trump's funding freeze, her job at the VA was safe. But her husband's foreign aid job wasn't. It became pretty clear that he was very likely to lose his job. Days later, Goggin received the fork in the road email sent to nearly every federal employee, giving them a deadline to resign and stay on the payroll through September. My initial reaction honestly was kind of fear, like, oh my gosh, you know, if a lot of people take this,

what's going to happen to services? Gaggen came to the VA a decade ago and loves working with veterans. But she thought if she could resign and keep getting paid through September, it might be the best move for her family after her husband lost his income. My husband and I talked about it and if this offer was legitimate, it seemed like, wow,

this could give, you know, I'm a highly competitive worker. There's lots of jobs available. I could potentially be making double salary for six months. She took the offer. I did. I hit resign on the email. Gaggen got an automated reply saying her response had been received. But a few days later, she got an email from the VA saying she isn't eligible to resign. It turns out actually

like social workers are exempt, which didn't surprise me. So Liz Gaggen thinks she still has a job. But it like who, who knows? I had regrets about telling my supervisor, given that, you know, like, the whole thing is kind of unraveling. Consider this. The Trump administration's chaotic federal overhaul is underway, and that's left many federal workers scared, confused, or out of a job. scared, confused, or out of a job. From NPR, I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's Consider This from NPR. President Donald Trump is forging ahead with his plans to dramatically shrink the government.

Federal workers are facing mass layoffs as the Trump administration takes aim at agencies across the federal government. Thousands, likely tens of thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs, with many more expected to follow. So with us now is MPR's Andrea Hsu, who has been talking with federal workers as all of this unfolds. Hey, Andrea. Hey.

All right. So there's been so much disruption, so much chaos. How are people reacting to the layoffs? Well, there is a lot of distress. You know, I'm hearing from federal employees from all over the country, actually, who have never seen anything like this. You know, a number of people have described it as a hostile takeover, a coup by someone that they say, we didn't elect.

They see a lot of this as Elon Musk's doing. Of course, he's the Tesla founder who's now advising President Trump. And a lot of these people, they went into government jobs because they wanted to serve the American people. They're doing critical work, things like serving our veterans or bringing innovation to agriculture or getting small businesses off the ground. You know, one person wrote to me, we are hardworking, patriotic people.

Another person said, you know, please help tell our stories so that the country can see that we are not enemies and we're not political actors. We vote both red and blue. And this person went on to say we're regular people trying to figure out how we're not political actors. We vote both red and blue. And this person went on to say, we're regular people trying to figure out how we're going to survive. And Andrea, you know, the effects of what's happening go beyond government. You know, the spending freezes of the administration has implemented affect nonprofits, government contractors. So there are people all over the country who are feeling the effects of what's happening. You know, at the same time, like I understand that, you know, these workers want to get

their story up, but they're in this weird limbo, right? And I imagine because of their, the precarity of their situation, they don't want to talk on the record necessarily. Yeah. A lot of them are writing and say, please, please don't, you know, mention my name. You know, people are incredibly fearful. They are fearful of losing their jobs. They're fearful of somehow being retaliated against by this administration.

I was able to talk to some people last week at a rally that was held right outside the US Capitol. It was organized by labor groups. So there are federal workers who also have elected positions within their labor unions, and they feel somewhat protected speaking in that capacity. And one person I met is Sharia Smith. She's an attorney with the Department of Education, and she's also president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. That's the union that represents about 2800 Education Department employees. And here's what Sharia Smith said. This was before the layoffs began.

We have a very chaotic situation, a toxic work environment for the last three weeks. We're concerned about what will happen to the services that we provide if we're not allowed to work. And, Andrew, the services she's talking about, you know, the Department of Education has people who help with things like financial aid and special education. And you know, recent hires in those departments were among dozens of probationary employees that we heard had gotten laid off last week. And Smith herself is an attorney in the Office of Civil Rights. That's the office that makes sure that students from elementary school all the way

up into college, they get the educational accommodations that they are entitled to under the law. So, Shree Smith is really worried that if this downsizing continues, she's worried about what's going to happen to the families who need help. We have tens of thousands current complaints open and if we are eliminated, those are Americans that will not receive services. Currently in the Office for Civil Rights, American citizens can file a one-page free complaint. They do not need an attorney, and they will be helped by attorneys like myself who have Ivy League degrees for free. I can't imagine that kind of work was going to continue if, you know, Trump and Doge crew like continue at this sort of clip? Yeah you know she is really worried if it's gonna continue. She's even said

there's talk about moving the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights to the Justice Department so she wonders if regular people will still have the ability to take their complaints to someone in the government. And yeah and she says that dozens of people in her office in the Office of Civil Rights were put on paid administrative leave already after Trump signed that executive order banning DEI programs in the federal government. She says these were people just doing their regular jobs, not running any kind of DEI-specific initiative. You know, it does seem like the Trump administration is pursuing multiple paths all at once for

downsizing the government, right? Like you you just mentioned there's that crackdown on DEI, there are the layoffs of probationary employees, but also there's the requirement that everyone return to office full-time, you know, ending telework. How's that going? Yeah, that is also underway, and it's also like all of this, like, quite chaotic. You know, some employees have been given dates to return to the office. Others, including, you know, people who have been given dates to return to the office. Others, including people who have been fully remote, have been told they need to go back to an office, but

where is still unclear. A number of federal workers who are covered by unions, by their collective bargaining agreements, they do have telework policies written into these contracts. At first, it seemed like the Trump administration was going to honor those, then the administration released this new memo saying well agencies have the right to set telework policies and those collective bargaining agreements will not be enforced So the unions are preparing to fight this I talked with Rich Couture. He's president of AFGE council 215 That's the union representing workers at the Social Security administration You know, they just signed a five-year contract right before Thanksgiving that had a pretty generous telework agreement in it. And you know, Couture says if that's not going to be honored, people are going to leave.

They know this because they did surveys around telework, you know, while they were negotiating that contract. We could lose potentially 50% of our workforce to attrition. We had 30% of our members are eligible to retire right now. Others would just seek other employment, lead the agency altogether. And I pressed him a little bit on this, Andrew, because you always hear members of Congress complain

that Americans aren't getting good service for things like social security because people aren't showing up in the office. And Rich Couture said, you know, actually, they have seen improved productivity with some of these telework policies in place. And he says, besides, you know, the people who are teleworking, they're not the ones who provide the face-to-face service anyway. He gave an example of the people who answer phones.

Our 800 number workers don't ever see anybody in person. They answer the phones all day. Every call they take is monitored. How long they're on that call, how long they're not on the phone, everything is tracked, everything's monitored. They know how productive those workers are. You know, so he's worried that this light speed downsizing

of the government could lead to a collapse of their ability to serve the public. And he's also really worried about what he calls the real possibility of workers at the Social Security Administration being replaced by artificial intelligence. Especially if they're closing offices, especially if we're shedding staff.

And I think the American people need to start asking questions in terms of whether that's in their interest. Do they wanna talk to you a human being when they wanna file for their retirement benefits or they want to talk to a human being when they want to file for their retirement benefits or do they want to talk to a robot? Hmm. You know, I think anybody who's worked anywhere ever for a long time, if you ask them really to be like, oh, okay, I see there's some waste, there's some bloat here, right? I can, you know, imagine some cutting and, you know, Trump was elected on the promise that he'd make the government better and more efficient and smaller. Is that message resonating with any of the federal workers you've heard from? Yeah, I would say very, very few. I have had people say, like you said, you know, there are systems that don't work as well as they should. Things could be more efficient. Maybe

there are some people who aren't being utilized to their potential. But they also say there's a way to downsize the government, and that's not what we're seeing now. People point to President Clinton. He oversaw a significant downsizing of the federal workforce, but it took place over years and it involved studies to figure out where the cuts could be made. Right now, everything feels like it's happening on the fly. Trump has been in the White House not even a month yet. And this has just been so unsettling.

I'll end with one more person I met at that rally, Aaron Barker. He's with the Transportation Safety Administration, and he's also president of the AFG Local 554, which represents TSA officers at the Atlanta airport. You know, he told me his members are losing sleep over everything that's happening. They're worried about their jobs, their families. They're worried about will they be able to get the government services they rely on. These are the people that are running the security checkpoints at the airport, so probably not the people you want distracted by everything going on.

So, Aaron Barker had this request. So when you go through the airport, be kind to them because it's so much going on and they're stressed beyond beyond what you could ever fathom. So be kind to them, give them some encouraging words. If you are a supporter of federal workers, let them know that you stand in solidarity with them. You know, a lot of people might hear federal workers and think Washington, DC, but actually 80% of federal workers work outside the Washington DC area

So chances are pretty good that you know Everyone listening might know someone who's a federal worker someone in your community or at your church or maybe it's your neighbor And so these are all people who are going through a lot right now. That's interesting MPR's labor and workplace correspondent Thanks, Andrew. Thank you, Andrew This episode was produced by Katherine Fink and Connor Donovan. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Courtney Doerning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Andrew Limbaugh.