Latest news with #AmericanFederationofGovernmentEmployeesLocal252
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Education Department pays over $7 million a month to employees forced to sit idle
The US Department of Education is paying more than $7 million a month to employees it has forced to go on leave, according to analysis from the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union that represents department employees. The payments could continue for years amid a long court battle over cuts instituted by the Trump administration. The department has already paid more than $21 million to idle employees over the last three months, AFGE has calculated, after they were terminated in March when the agency cut nearly half of its workforce. Roughly 1,300 people were laid off and hundreds more took voluntary 'buyouts.' The firings were part of President Donald Trump's larger plan to dismantle the Department of Education and promise to deliver efficiencies through cuts across government. Dozens of other agencies have faced cuts in recent months, with workers in those departments facing similar situations. Under the terms of the layoffs, affected Department of Education workers were to be paid their salaries until June 9, their last day of employment. However, following a May federal court decision blocking White House plans to shut down the agency, the workers were reinstated and placed on 'administrative leave' — meaning they are employed but not allowed to work — as lawsuits continue. This means salary payments will now continue past Monday, while employees remain in what many describe as 'administrative purgatory,' racking up further costs for the department. According to AFGE Local 252, which analyzed over 900 salaries of affected employees, the true cost to the Department of Education is well over $7 million a month as the figure does not include employee benefits or managers' pay. The cuts were billed as a drive for government savings. When announcing the layoffs in March, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said they reflected the agency's 'commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.' Critics point out that it has instead generated wasteful costs with no returns when employees continue getting paid for not working. Meanwhile, numerous employees on administrative leave who are members of Local 252 told CNN they feel embarrassed collecting a paycheck. After her termination in March, Ariel Shepetovskiy, a Department of Education lawyer, lost access to computer systems and email accounts needed to do her work. Now on administrative leave, 'it feels like garbage to receive pay in exchange for doing nothing,' Shepetovskiy said. 'I also feel shame because on some level I feel like a parasite for American taxpayers.' But, she said, 'If I leave my position then there's no chance of me ever being able to do my job again.' She is holding on despite the uncertainties because she has hope that employees could be brought back, she said. 'I'm trying to do my best to be productive, but I am also sad. I am frustrated and upset every day.' Robert Jason Cottrell, a data coordinator with the department, also expressed frustration — wanting, but unable — to work. 'I feel like I am on welfare,' he said. 'I almost feel like a leech on the system. I am able-bodied and able to go into work to help the nation's mission to educate our future generations. And I'm not doing that right now.' CNN has asked the Department of Education for comment. In an email to staff reviewed by CNN, the agency told workers Friday that they would continue to be employed, and that it was assessing how to 'reintegrate you back to the office in the most seamless way possible.' 'This includes evaluating necessary updates to security access, technology, and workspaces to ensure full operability,' the email said. Dozens of government agencies are involved in lawsuits challenging White House directives cutting their workforce, with workers similarly placed on administrative leave and unable to work across Washington. As lawsuits drag on, agencies have offered buyouts or settlements to encourage workers to leave. In recent weeks, some Department of Education employees say they were offered settlements in exchange for resigning their positions. Several employees given the offer told CNN they had cases pending before the Merit Systems Protection Board, or MSPB, a government office that civil servants can use to appeal personnel disputes. Settlement offers reviewed by CNN would pay for these employees through September if they drop their cases and quit. Some who received the offers described them as feeling 'scammy' and like being plied with 'sweet talk' upon receiving them. Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252 in Dallas, felt the deals amounted to attempts to 'intimidate great public servants to leave their jobs.' Smith, who was laid off in March, said she has heard from over a dozen employees who were approached with these offers in the past two weeks. Victoria DeLano, who is on administrative leave, said the settlement would mean giving up the option to be reinstated. 'I am not giving up that option,' she said. 'So many of us are just holding on because we know how important this work is.'
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Elon Musk's Department of Government Inefficiency
Elon Musk showed up in Washington in January on a promise to streamline the federal government and make it run more efficiently. But over the course of just five weeks, he's accomplished precisely the opposite: a massive and unnecessary time suck that's pulled federal employees away from their duties on a daily basis. Firing essential workers who need to then be rehired. Distracting agencies with directives that are reversed and then reversed again. Forcing workers back into offices where they don't have enough desks. And provoking countless agency meetings where managers are unable to answer basic questions about the White House's latest move. On and on it goes. 'The meetings are as clear as mud,' said Sheria Smith, a civil rights attorney at the Department of Education in Texas and president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. 'No one knows anything. … People are being released from duty, then returned to duty. We don't know who's calling the shots. It's just wildly inefficient.' She added, 'How can you be on task when you don't even know from hour to hour whether you're going to [have a job]?' President Donald Trump vowed on the campaign trail to fire a lot of people and shrink the federal workforce, which numbers around 2.4 million, excluding the U.S. Postal Service. So far the administration has terminated thousands of people through legally dubious layoffs and tried to push out tens of thousands more through the also legally dubious deferred resignation program known as 'Fork in the Road.' In more than a dozen interviews, federal workers described lost hours and days as they tried to navigate an endless stream of unclear guidance as their jobs hang in the balance. Most of them spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being fired or retaliated against. A mental health provider at the Department of Veterans Affairs said in the wake of the 'Fork' proposal they'd had four impromptu staff meetings, each up to a half-hour long, 'pulling us away from veteran care.' 'In response to Saturday's 'what did you do last week?' email, leadership scheduled yet another meeting first thing Monday morning — forcing me to reschedule a veteran's appointment just to receive guidance from my leadership on how to respond,' they said. Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, should instead be called a department of 'inefficiency or ineptitude,' said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a more effective federal government. 'They have caused unbelievable waste, unbelievable distraction from the mission, unbelievable loss of critical talent,' Stier said. 'They've done nothing to understand the systems they're trying to change or learn from those around them who know better.' He added, 'The federal government isn't, in fact, a tech startup.' Much of the wasted time stems from the White House's hostile and confusing directives. Some of the most critical information isn't coming from federal agency leaders — it's coming from the previously obscure Office of Personnel Management, and from Musk, the unelected head of a not-real federal agency. (Trump has formally renamed the U.S. Digital Service the U.S. DOGE Service, but DOGE is better understood as a White House government-cutting initiative.) Late last week, more than 2 million workers received an email from OPM instructing them to reply with a list of five bullet points explaining what they'd accomplished during the previous week. The insulting demand was paired with a threat from Musk on X, his private social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, where he said a failure to reply would be considered 'a resignation.' Workers, union representatives and agency managers spent the weekend trying to figure out whether people actually needed to respond. Many employees got little done on Monday as unscheduled meetings were called and agency heads gave conflicting guidance on what to do. OPM later said replying to Musk's demand was voluntary, suggesting there would be no repercussions for ignoring it. But Trump contradicted that guidance by saying those who didn't reply would be 'fired' or 'sort of semi-fired.' Such chaos ends up having a real-world impact, said an employee of the Veterans Benefits Administration who processes disability claims. The worker receives a daily report on her productivity rate, which is based on the number of claims processed and their complexity, and she saw a roughly 20% drop on Monday as she and others were dealing with the Musk ultimatum. In other words, veterans with disabilities stemming from their service to the country were waiting longer to have their claims processed because of confusing threats from the White House. 'People are stressed out, and that's going to get in the way,' she explained. 'We have to focus. These claims are very complex. It requires a lot of attention. We're definitely being taken away from the focus we should be putting on the veterans.' Another VA worker said their superiors had been 'mired in daily meetings to discuss what little information we had, how it was affecting employees and overall morale, and addressing whether or not any of this is legal.' 'To estimate time loss over the course of one week, I'd say it cost us at least a full day's productivity, if not more,' they said. Nothing may be more wasteful than firing workers who must then be rehired. After the Trump administration's sloppy firing of probationary employees, agencies had to try to hastily reinstate workers who oversee nuclear weapons, manage the power grid and fight bird flu. Among them were more than two dozen workers at the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal power supplier in the Pacific Northwest managed under the Energy Department. Mike Braden, a Bonneville Power Administration employee and president of its employee union, said that by the time the workers were rehired they had already lost their access to the IT systems and their clearance to enter buildings. The advice from management upon their return was to 'pretend like nothing happened.' 'There's no thought to this, no coordination with the agencies,' Braden said of the White House. 'We have all this disruption, and we can't figure out how things are going to work moving forward.' He said his phone is buzzing nonstop with questions from members about emails or memos from OPM or posts online from Musk. 'I'm getting hit up all through the weekend, all throughout the evening,' he said. 'Somebody will ping me, 'Hey I just saw this — what does this mean?' I'm like, 'Aw shit.'' Paul Dobias, a Department of Navy engineer and president of his union, said agency managers are so afraid of appearing hostile to the Trump administration's goals that they seem to pass along guidance without review. Many of those managers, he noted, could lose their civil service protections under Trump's Schedule F scheme. 'It just goes right through their doors where nobody takes the time to go and sit down and figure out, ′Does this all add up and make sense?′' Dobias said. 'I've seen a number of documents where it [appears] there's like five or six different people generating the documents … and they're not talking with each other.' The turbulence has created an enormous amount of work for federal employees who also are union representatives and help enforce collective bargaining agreements. Coworkers are coming to them more than ever for clarity — and in many cases managers are steering them to the union representatives because the managers themselves don't have answers. Smith, the union president at the Education Department, said supervisors seem to be at a loss when they're peppered with questions in online staff meetings about the administration's latest directive. She said she's heard a variation of one particular nonanswer more than once. 'They'll say, 'We all got the same email,'' Smith said.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Much of the Black middle class was built by federal jobs. That may change.
When Francine Verdine took a job as a clerk at the Internal Revenue Service in Houston in 1983, it was supposed to be a stopgap until something better came along. She didn't expect that 42 years later, she would look back on it as the start of a rewarding career that provided growth in various management positions, upward mobility and the opportunity to build a comfortable life for her family. 'I enjoyed my career,' said Verdine, who retired in 2019. 'I had no idea when I started that I could make the money I did by the time I left. It's sad that many others' opportunity to have a similar career could be over.' For decades, the federal government provided both reliable jobs and guardrails to offset systemic racial bias in hiring and promotions, offering an alternative for Black workers who might be overlooked or ignored in the private sector. They played a crucial role in helping Black workers like Verdine join the middle class and thrive. But vast cuts by the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, are threatening to close down that once-dependable path to financial stability. The government, which has about 3 million employees, is the largest employer in the country. At least 75,000 of them accepted buyout offers and thousands were fired in the last several weeks. Many of the workers fired were either newer hires or told they were let go for subpar performance. 'The federal workforce was a means to help build Black middle class. It hired Black Americans at a higher rate than private employers,' said Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents the Education Department employees. As a part of his efforts, President Trump is angling to shut down the Department of Education, a move that will have dramatic repercussions around the country. Nearly 30% of Education employees are Black according to a 2024 report by the department. Smith said 74 workers at the department had been let go so far, 60 of whom are Black. At the Department of Health and Human Services, where more than 1,300 new hires were reportedly laid off, 20% of the staff was Black. And at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which recently lost 1,000 employees, 24% are Black. These numbers illustrate how important government jobs have been and are for Black people, said Marcus Casey, a fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He said the administration's efforts are trying to undermine the gains of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination on the basis of race and other characteristics, and of affirmative action, which began in the federal government to make the hiring and promoting process more inclusive. 'Whether it was from the post office, through direct growth of federal agencies, through the military — the government fought against the headwinds associated with the private sector,' said Casey, an affiliated scholar with Brookings' Future of Middle Class Initiative. Many Black people could build careers through the federal government typically because the private sector overlooked them, regardless of their qualifications, he said. 'And so, the federal government has been essential to the building of the Black middle class.' A worker at the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C, who requested anonymity for fear of being fired, said several workers in his office have been fired for 'poor performance.' 'Morale is so low,' he said. 'People who should be there are gone. Everyone is nervous about the next shoe dropping.' He said he has 16 years on the job and was planning to retire in four. 'I wanted to do an even 20, maybe even 25. But I have to be honest with myself now: I don't think I'm going to make it. Every indicator is that my head will be chopped off sooner or later. How can anyone be productive with that hanging over you?' The president's sweeping changes began with ending DEI throughout the government, weaponizing it as a 'destructive ideology' along the way. Countless jobs have been lost in an area that was created to develop fair hiring opportunities. 'A lot of Black people not only benefited from what they call DEI now, but the original affirmative action programs, and the veteran preferences,' Casey said. 'That combination helped a lot of people get a foothold in the civil service.' These efforts, he said, 'helped people get middle-class salaries and build middle-class lives with an ecosystem of race-specific businesses around Black communities.' Verdine said it's no secret that the government could be streamlined, but added that the way the administration is going about it is 'disheartening.' 'There's no humanity in what's happening right now,' she said. 'No organization. It's just chaos and people being hurt.' Among those facing the chaos are Verdine's daughter and daughter-in-law, who have disabilities, and are federal workers at the Food and Drug Administration. Under Schedule A, workers with disabilities are allowed a faster hiring process, but their probationary periods are longer than a standard federal employee. Her family members were reluctant to speak with NBC News about their worries for the future for fear of reprisal. Verdine said they are rightfully fearful, as disabilities are a part of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs that Trump barred two days after being sworn in. 'You cannot tell where this will go,' she said. 'My daughter and daughter-in-law live in uncertainty. At any time, based on how this has been going, they can get the call that their job is no more.' The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment. Verdine stressed that she had to be qualified for the jobs and promotions she obtained, and in some cases, she felt as though she had to be 'overly qualified' for positions that she had seen white people, men and women, get with less education, less experience than she had. 'As a matter of fact, I had to train some of those same people. So, the idea that DEI was some pathway to giving Black people jobs, that just wasn't true,' she said. Smith, from Local 252, said that although the federal jobs cuts are not labeled as DEI casualties, the pattern is curious. 'We are concerned as a union that the vagueness of a lot of these executive orders and their implementation are actually a means or pretext to get rid of Black, brown, female members of this workforce for reasons that may not be complying with the law,' Smith said. She added that the majority of people who've been forced out by this administration ostensibly based on DEI do not work in DEI, but 'they happen to be Black.' In addition to regulating America's schools, the Department of Education enforces Title VI 'to make sure that Black and brown students across this country are getting equitable access to education,' Smith said. 'That work has been stopped. … We've been told to stop working for the American people.' Ros Patterson, a 62-year-old benefits department worker at the Veterans Administration in Cole Valley, Illinois, received a phone call on Jan. 28 telling her she had been let go after nearly a year. She said she was told she had 90 minutes to turn in her company laptop. Flustered and confused, because she was not given a reason for her firing at the time, Patterson drove to Iowa City, Iowa, her closest federal office, and learned that no one there was aware that she was to drop off her laptop — or had papers for her to sign confirming her termination. Eventually, someone helped her. About 30 minutes later she learned from now-former colleagues that all VA workers had been offered a buyout that included eight months pay as part of a severance package. As a probationary employee, she said she was not eligible for it. 'I could have used that paycheck as I looked for another job,' Patterson said. She had not planned to retire, but losing her job forced her to, she said, so she could maintain a semblance of her old life. 'I wasn't left any choice,' said Patterson, who now receives food stamps, is on Medicaid and was approved for Section 8 senior housing. 'I understand probationary employees are quick and easy to fire. But it was done in such a duplicitous manner.' She said she voted for Trump, the orchestrator of the chaos in her life, but is 'not bitter. It is what it is. I'm not blaming Trump. My thing is how it happened. I had no time to process anything or get myself together. It's cold the way it was done,' she said. 'You'd expect the government to do better.'This article was originally published on
NBC News
22-02-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Much of the Black middle class was built by federal jobs. That may change.
When Francine Verdine took a job as a clerk at the Internal Revenue Service in Houston in 1983, it was supposed to be a stopgap until something better came along. She didn't expect that 42 years later, she would look back on it as the start of a rewarding career that provided growth in various management positions, upward mobility and the opportunity to build a comfortable life for her family. 'I enjoyed my career,' said Verdine, who retired in 2019. 'I had no idea when I started that I could make the money I did by the time I left. It's sad that many others' opportunity to have a similar career could be over.' For decades, the federal government provided both reliable jobs and guardrails to offset systemic racial bias in hiring and promotions, offering an alternative for Black workers who might be overlooked or ignored in the private sector. They played a crucial role in helping Black workers like Verdine join the middle class and thrive. But vast cuts by the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, are threatening to close down that once-dependable path to financial stability. The government, which has about 3 million employees, is the largest employer in the country. At least 75,000 of them accepted buyout offers and thousands were fired in the last several weeks. Many of the workers fired were either newer hires or told they were let go for subpar performance. 'The federal workforce was a means to help build Black middle class. It hired Black Americans at a higher rate than private employers,' said Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents the Education Department employees. As a part of his efforts, President Trump is angling to shut down the Department of Education, a move that will have dramatic repercussions around the country. Nearly 30% of Education employees are Black according to a 2024 report by the department. Smith said 74 workers at the department had been let go so far, 60 of whom are Black. At the Department of Health and Human Services, where more than 1,300 new hires were reportedly laid off, 20% of the staff was Black. And at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which recently lost 1,000 employees, 24% are Black. These numbers illustrate how important government jobs have been and are for Black people, said Marcus Casey, a fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He said the administration's efforts are trying to undermine the gains of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination on the basis of race and other characteristics, and of affirmative action, which began in the federal government to make the hiring and promoting process more inclusive. 'Whether it was from the post office, through direct growth of federal agencies, through the military — the government fought against the headwinds associated with the private sector,' said Casey, an affiliated scholar with Brookings' Future of Middle Class Initiative. Many Black people could build careers through the federal government typically because the private sector overlooked them, regardless of their qualifications, he said. 'And so, the federal government has been essential to the building of the Black middle class.' A worker at the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C, who requested anonymity for fear of being fired, said several workers in his office have been fired for 'poor performance.' 'Morale is so low,' he said. 'People who should be there are gone. Everyone is nervous about the next shoe dropping.' He said he has 16 years on the job and was planning to retire in four. 'I wanted to do an even 20, maybe even 25. But I have to be honest with myself now: I don't think I'm going to make it. Every indicator is that my head will be chopped off sooner or later. How can anyone be productive with that hanging over you?' Undoing DEI to cut the federal workforce The president's sweeping changes began with ending DEI throughout the government, weaponizing it as a 'destructive ideology ' along the way. Countless jobs have been lost in an area that was created to develop fair hiring opportunities. 'A lot of Black people not only benefited from what they call DEI now, but the original affirmative action programs, and the veteran preferences,' Casey said. 'That combination helped a lot of people get a foothold in the civil service.' These efforts, he said, 'helped people get middle-class salaries and build middle-class lives with an ecosystem of race-specific businesses around Black communities.' Verdine said it's no secret that the government could be streamlined, but added that the way the administration is going about it is 'disheartening.' 'There's no humanity in what's happening right now,' she said. 'No organization. It's just chaos and people being hurt.' Among those facing the chaos are Verdine's daughter and daughter-in-law, who have disabilities, and are federal workers at the Food and Drug Administration. Under Schedule A, workers with disabilities are allowed a faster hiring process, but their probationary periods are longer than a standard federal employee. Her family members were reluctant to speak with NBC News about their worries for the future for fear of reprisal. Verdine said they are rightfully fearful, as disabilities are a part of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs that Trump barred two days after being sworn in. 'You cannot tell where this will go,' she said. 'My daughter and daughter-in-law live in uncertainty. At any time, based on how this has been going, they can get the call that their job is no more.' The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment. Verdine stressed that she had to be qualified for the jobs and promotions she obtained, and in some cases, she felt as though she had to be 'overly qualified' for positions that she had seen white people, men and women, get with less education, less experience than she had. 'As a matter of fact, I had to train some of those same people. So, the idea that DEI was some pathway to giving Black people jobs, that just wasn't true,' she said. Smith, from Local 252, said that although the federal jobs cuts are not labeled as DEI casualties, the pattern is curious. 'We are concerned as a union that the vagueness of a lot of these executive orders and their implementation are actually a means or pretext to get rid of Black, brown, female members of this workforce for reasons that may not be complying with the law,' Smith said. She added that the majority of people who've been forced out by this administration ostensibly based on DEI do not work in DEI, but 'they happen to be Black.' In addition to regulating America's schools, the Department of Education enforces Title VI 'to make sure that Black and brown students across this country are getting equitable access to education,' Smith said. 'That work has been stopped. … We've been told to stop working for the American people.' Forced into early retirement Ros Patterson, a 62-year-old benefits department worker at the Veterans Administration in Cole Valley, Illinois, received a phone call on Jan. 28 telling her she had been let go after nearly a year. She said she was told she had 90 minutes to turn in her company laptop. Flustered and confused, because she was not given a reason for her firing at the time, Patterson drove to Iowa City, Iowa, her closest federal office, and learned that no one there was aware that she was to drop off her laptop — or had papers for her to sign confirming her termination. Eventually, someone helped her. About 30 minutes later she learned from now-former colleagues that all VA workers had been offered a buyout that included eight months pay as part of a severance package. As a probationary employee, she said she was not eligible for it. 'I could have used that paycheck as I looked for another job,' Patterson said. She had not planned to retire, but losing her job forced her to, she said, so she could maintain a semblance of her old life. 'I wasn't left any choice,' said Patterson, who now receives food stamps, is on Medicaid and was approved for Section 8 senior housing. 'I understand probationary employees are quick and easy to fire. But it was done in such a duplicitous manner.' She said she voted for Trump, the orchestrator of the chaos in her life, but is 'not bitter. It is what it is. I'm not blaming Trump. My thing is how it happened. I had no time to process anything or get myself together. It's cold the way it was done,' she said. 'You'd expect the government to do better.'
