“Roughly 600” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employees received permanent termination notices in the wake of a court decision temporarily protecting some of the agency’s teams but not others, according to the largest union representing government workers and corroborating news reports.
The full extent of the separation notices sent out this week is unclear, as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not provide the union with a formal notice of which groups are affected, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) chapter representing CDC workers wrote in a Wednesday notice.
A representative of the union told Fierce Healthcare Thursday morning that the cuts spanned several areas within the agency, including “the Division of Violence Prevention, [Equal Employment Opportunity], [Freedom of Information office], the Office of Financial Resources, the offices of the chief information and chief operating officers, and more.”
Individual employees speaking to national news outlets said their terminations were effective as of Monday. About 100 people affected worked in violence prevention, according to the AP.
The HHS has confirmed the termination notices to press but did not specify how many or what groups were affected. In a March statement announcing its restructuring plans, the HHS said it aimed to decrease the CDC’s workforce by about 2,400 employees (1,000 of which would be moved to another agency)—though the months since have seen instances of employees placed on administrative leave being called back to work.
Complicating the administration’s planned reorganization have been lawsuits and temporary rulings putting the brakes on the terminations. An update in one such case came last week, when a Rhode Island federal judge issued a preliminary ruling protecting several groups within the CDC.
Among these were the Center for Tobacco Products; the Office of Head Start; the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; the Division of Reproductive Health; the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; the National Center for Environmental Health; and others, according to the Aug. 12 order (PDF).
That preliminary ruling was more narrow than earlier orders, opening the door to this week’s terminations, the AFGE said. The union said it is working to get in touch with affected employees to coordinate appeals with the Merit Systems Protection Board.
“When we face that next public health crisis, we do so with a decimated and demoralized workforce,” the AFGE local wrote in its Wednesday notice. “HHS has shown that it does not have the organizational or operational capacity to take over the support functions that the agency had before these firings. This reduction in force was operationally a mess. They have shown they are in no way prepared to support CDC when America needs it most.”
Further, the AFGE said the HHS’ decision to finalize the cuts undermines its promises to support rattled CDC staffers in the wake of the Aug. 8 shooting that targeted the agency’s headquarters.
Wednesday, a letter cosigned by several hundred current and former HHS employees listed the department’s widespread layoffs as a primary example of leadership “dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health.” The letter laid much of the blame for the shooting and America’s weakening confidence in health agencies at the feet of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose “dangerous and deceitful statements” the employees said have spread misinformation and vilified federal health workers.
The HHS, in a statement responding to the letter, said the secretary is “standing firmly with CDC employees [and] ensuring their safety and well-being remain a top priority. … Any attempt to conflate widely supported public health reforms with the violence of a suicidal mass shooter is an attempt to politicize a tragedy.”