When Getting Fired Is Only the Beginning for Federal Workers
The week after Martin Basch was fired from his federal job in February, he started applying for state unemployment benefits in Ohio, his home state, determined to find a new path.
But he soon found himself facing an unexpected snag: He kept receiving paychecks, beyond his official termination date of March 14.
This might not seem like a problem. But for Basch, it was a sign of the chaotic and costly limbo in which he and many other federal workers have found themselves as President Trump seeks to streamline the federal government.
I’ve been talking to federal workers for months about the mass firings’ impact on them, and one thing has been clear: The cuts have been anything but straightforward and efficient.
For many, the layoff was just the beginning. Workers have found themselves locked in a Kafkaesque cycle of getting fired and rehired, and some have struggled to track down the documentation they need to move on.
Basic questions, elusive answers
Their terminations came abruptly, and with little explanation. Legal challenges have added more chaos as judges ordered thousands of fired workers to be temporarily reinstated, and higher courts have reversed some of those decisions.
Many have been on paid leave, watching the courts and waiting to hear from their agencies.
For some of them, the Supreme Court decisions allowing the administration to proceed with layoffs at certain agencies might actually come as a relief. (Basch, for example, was temporarily reinstated by a court case, and he was placed on paid leave; his termination was made official by a ruling in May.)
As I checked in with some of them over the past few months, they described how they were struggling getting answers to pretty basic questions. Am I employed? Am I still covered by my government health insurance? Can you please send me the paperwork I need to prove that I am fired so I can apply for unemployment?
Calls and emails were ignored or redirected.
The process has been excruciating, they told me. But now they were placed on hold, stranded in a web of federal benefits coordinators and insurance carriers, either one of which would be enough to cause a nervous breakdown.
It was the bureaucratic version of the old Abbott and Costello routine, “Who’s on first?” Except the umpire blew up the field, and the bases are in pieces.
An endless loop
Sarah Garman, who was fired from the Internal Revenue Service, found herself stuck in a loop with the government and her insurance carrier, each one telling her to call the other.
For Erin Czajkowski, who was fired from her job at Housing and Urban Development, untangling these issues became a full-time job, so much so that she hardly had time to mourn the one she lost.
Yvonne Robertson, whose division at the General Services Administration was eliminated in layoffs announced in March, has been passed from one person to another as she has tried to obtain basic information that the government is supposed to provide employees in these circumstances.
First, Robertson asked the government to explain the so-called reduction in force process and what she was entitled to. When that went nowhere, she dug up the rules around the process herself, spending hours on research, and then reached out again, this time requesting specific documents. In the few instances she did get a response from the government, the information it provided was incomplete or inaccurate, she said.
“It’s almost a do-it-yourself firing,” Robertson said.