 "Elon Musk listens to US President Donald Trump speak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on, February 11. Reuters")
A number of laid-off federal employees were only given a half hour to pack up their stuff and vacate their offices after the Trump administration terminated the employment of as many as 2,300 officials.
The Washington Post interviewed some employees who were fired swiftly on Friday who said they were given just 30 minutes to leave the federal offices.
The latest mass lay-offs were conducted at the US Interior Department which manages around 500 million acres of the country’s public lands, including its national parks, and also administers the country’s onshore and offshore oil and gas leasing programs.
A source told Reuters that 800 of these 2,300 employees worked at the Bureau of Land Management, which manages millions of federally-owned acres for uses ranging from oil and gas development to timber harvesting, cultural preservation and recreation.
Fired over pre-recorded message
Federal workers who talked to The Washington Post said that the news was broken to thousands of their colleagues via messages that contained pre-recorded videos or through group video calls.
The President of the American Federation of Government Employees, Everett Kelley, said, “Employees were given no notice, no due process, and no opportunity to defend themselves in a blatant violation of the principles of fairness and merit that are supposed to govern federal employment.”
Some people were told that they would receive formal emails containing their termination letters but they never arrived.
According to a report by CNN, about 100 employees at the personnel management were fired Microsoft Teams group call where officials told them to leave the premises in an hour.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWhy is Trump firing federal workers?
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is spearheading a major initiative to reduce the size of the federal workforce as a cost-cutting measure. Both Musk and Donald Trump have expressed concerns about what they see as excessive government staffing.
Trump has described the federal government as overgrown and packed with redundant positions, while Musk, on Thursday, likened certain agencies to “weeds” that should be uprooted, even suggesting that some should be eliminated entirely.
With inputs from agencies