Summary
- Over 1,300 CDC employees received layoff notices Friday.
- Layoffs included entire offices, health statistics, outbreak teams.
- By weekend, 700 layoffs were rescinded, many reinstated.
According to former CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry, it resulted in "instability and whiplash."
Although there doesn't appear to be any public proof of an error, the Trump administration claims that 700 reduction in force (RIF) warnings were given to employees in error. An additional 600 fired workers have not been brought back to work.
“It seems like they just took a sledgehammer to the agency versus a scalpel,”
Houry said.
“The fact they brought half back already just shows they didn’t think through what they were doing.”
The entire staff of the prestigious epidemiology publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), was fired and then brought back on board. So were "disease detectives," staff at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and workers on suicide prevention and global health.
However, the whole human resources department is absent, which will have an impact on how the entire organization operates.
As the primary conduit for congressional inquiry, the Washington office is still closed, which "makes it difficult to communicate with Congress," according to Houry.
Employees from the CDC's ethics office, which manages conflicts of interest for CDC executives and advisory committee members, and the institutional review board, which examines study designs, were also let go.
In the next 30 days, some science protocols will be up for renewal by the institutional review board.
“They’ll have to be shut down,”
Houry said.
The National Center for Health Statistics was hit hard, with cuts to the staff working on nutrition surveys and electronic health records, and employees in the science office were laid off. The program offering assistance to employees was also cut. These workers provided mental health support, especially amid waves of layoffs and after a mass shooting two months ago that killed a police officer, David Rose, and shook the agency.
“That is no longer available,”
Houry said.
The CDC's capacity to notify the public about outbreaks will be impacted by the termination of numerous employees from the data office and the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.
Houry thinks the jobs might have been restored following public outrage and is not persuaded that the withdrawn notices were the result of a coding error.
“It usually doesn’t impact hundreds of people,”
she said.
“When you do look at what has been reinstated so far, it does seem like it was the things that had the most attention to it.”
In the past, some workers were unintentionally let go because they had just changed employment or because their jobs were recorded incorrectly, resulting in automated termination notices.
By the time of publication, the Guardian had not received a response from HHS regarding the reasons for the notice of reinstatement given to certain CDC staff or whether officials had any record of an error.
“The cuts this weekend just didn’t seem like there was any thought behind it,”
Houry said.
“The capacity to respond to an outbreak or to communities is hampered.”
Measles, for example, continues spreading across the country in the worst outbreak in three decades – and if it continues for the next few months, the US will lose its elimination status.
“We really need Congress to ask questions about how these RIFs happened, particularly when these are for appropriated [budget] lines. The CDC really needs congressional public support at this point,”
Houry said.
“The CDC takes care of the public. We need the public to take care of the CDC.”
How do government shutdowns influence federal workforce policies?
During shutdowns, non-essential federal employees can be furloughed, an unpaid leave of absence, or laid off. Each agency is directed to establish which personnel are “essential” personnel and which are “non-essential.” Non-essential personnel are sent home without pay until such time as pay and operations can resume without an act of Congress to fund operations. This causes a disruption in the stability and operation of the workforce.
Shutdowns sometimes lead agencies to formally propose permanent layoffs through reduction in force (RIF) procedures. RIFs may be a desired agenda and scheduled opportunity for an administration to effect layoffs and reshape priorities. RIFs are subject to legal and administrative requirements, including notice to the affected employee, and an appeals process.
Heightened levels of uncertainty, declining morale and greater attrition risk may result from or be reconciled with prolonged or repeated shutdowns.