Donald Trump<\/a> signed an executive order on Tuesday that told agency leaders to plan for \u201clarge-scale reductions in force\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\nElon Musk, whom the president has given wide leeway to slash government spending with his so-called \u201cdepartment of government efficiency\u201d, called on Thursday for the elimination of whole agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,\u201d Musk said via a video call to the world governments summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. \u201cIf we don\u2019t remove the roots of the weed, then it\u2019s easy for the weed to grow back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul Light, an expert on the federal government and professor emeritus of public service at New York University, said it seemed like the administration was \u201cinventing new methods for destroying government capacity\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re basically harassing your own workforce at the end of the day,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re undermining the engine that you want to run.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Layoffs are unlikely to yield significant deficit savings. When the congressional budget office looked at the issue, it found the government spent $271bn annually compensating civilian federal workers, with about 60% of that total going to workers employed by the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government could, in theory, have cut all those workers and still run a deficit of more than $1tn that would continue to grow as tax revenues are needed to keep up with the growing costs of social security and Medicare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thursday\u2019s order was an expansion of previous directions from OPM, which told agencies earlier this week that probationary employees should be fired if they weren\u2019t meeting high standards. It\u2019s not clear how many workers are currently in a probationary period. According to government data maintained by OPM, as of March 2024, 220,000 workers had less than a year on the job \u2013 the most recent data available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The firing of probationary employees began earlier this week and has included Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Education workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least 39 were fired from the education department on Wednesday, according to a union that represents agency workers, including civil rights workers, special education specialists and student aid officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The layoffs also hit Department of Veterans Affairs researchers working on cancer treatment, opioid addiction, prosthetics and burn pit exposure, US senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, said on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m hearing from longtime VA researchers in my home state of Washington who are right now being told to immediately stop their research and pack their bags,\u201d Murray said in a statement, \u201cnot because their work isn\u2019t desperately needed, but because Trump and Elon have decided to fire these researchers on a whim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a group that defends government workers, said the agriculture department\u2019s food safety and inspection service would be hit especially hard by the laying off of probationary employees because it has trouble recruiting inspectors required to be present at all times at most slaughterhouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFiring any probationary employees would be a big kick in the gut to those that do very grueling and difficult work,\u201d Peer\u2019s executive director, Tim Whitehouse, said. \u201cIt would make our food system less safe and cause consumer confidence in the safety of our food supply to dip.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The civilian federal workforce, not including military personnel and postal workers, is made up of about 2.4 million people. While about 20% of the workers are in Washington DC and the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia, more than 80% live outside the Capitol region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s initial attempt to downsize the workforce was the deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, which offered to pay people until 30 September if they agreed to quit. The White House said 75,000 people signed up, and a federal judge cleared a legal roadblock for the program on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the number of workers who took the offer was less than the administration\u2019s target, and Trump has made it clear he would take further steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Employees at the National Science Foundation and the housing and urban development department were told this week that large reductions \u2013 in some cases a halving of the workforce \u2013 would be coming, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The National Science Foundation was told to expect a 25% to 50% reduction in force within two months, while the housing and urban development department was told to plan for a 50% reduction, the person said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were also bracing on Thursday for reductions in their workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The order Trump signed on Tuesday stipulated that government functions not required by law would be prioritized for cuts and hiring would be restricted. With exceptions for functions such as public safety, only one employee can be added for every four that leave. In addition, new hires would generally need the approval from a representative of Doge, expanding the influence of Musk\u2019s team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump, speaking to reporters later at the White House, praised Musk\u2019s work to slash federal spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking for waste, fraud and abuse,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what Elon is working so hard on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has also been sharply critical of federal workers, especially those who want to keep working remotely, though his administration is simultaneously working to cut federal office space and ordering the termination of worksite leases throughout the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNobody is gonna work from home,\u201d Trump said on Monday. \u201cThey are gonna be going out, they\u2019re gonna play tennis, they\u2019re gonna play golf, they\u2019re gonna do a lot of things. They\u2019re not working.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Office of personnel management orders agencies to dismiss workers who had not yet gained civil service protection The Trump administration on Thursday intensified its sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce, the country\u2019s largest employer, by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1152],"tags":[1490,2345,1564,3810,1230],"class_list":["post-38491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanrights","tag-administration","tag-employees","tag-layoffs","tag-probation","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38504,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38491\/revisions\/38504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}