United States: Under Trump’s administration, a substantial reduction of federal workers took effect by forming a policy that forced government agencies to eliminate almost all new workers who had not attained civil service rights, which eliminated thousands of jobs.
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Several agencies delivered alerts to their workers regarding large-scale employee reductions that would affect their departments.
The Human Resources unit of the federal government, which is operated by the Office of Personnel Management, chose to dismiss all temporary employees who entered employment within the past year.
A source with first-hand knowledge disclosed this information about the notification to the public despite lacking authorization to make such statements, AP News reported.
The personnel officers themselves did not escape job termination when dozens of probationary staff at OPM received a mass telephone dismissal followed by instructions to exit the premises within half an hour, according to another anonymous source.
Future job cuts anticipated
Workers can anticipate future job cuts to serve as an initial wave before major staff reductions take place.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order through which he instructed agency administrators to determine the plan for substantial workforce reductions.
During an interview with President Trump, Elon Musk asked for the complete elimination of government agencies using his authority as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
According to Musk, who stated via a video at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, “I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leaving a lot of them behind,” and “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”
What more are the experts stating?
As per Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees representing federal workers, the administration “abused” the probation status of workers “to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance but because they were hired before Trump took office,” AP News reported.
The latest instructions from OPM extended their initial notice to agencies where new employees required dismissal when they failed to reach their performance goals.
Official statistics do not show current data regarding probationary workers. The latest available data from OPM reveals that 220,000 government employees started working within less than one year, according to their maintained figures during March 2024.