EPA Workers Receive Emails Warning their Employment could Be Terminated

More than 1,100 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency got notice today that they were considered to be on probationary status and warning they might be fired right away, according to an e-mail obtained by CNN.

Probationary employees getting the email have actually been working at the company for less than a year. The emails started to go out late on Wednesday afternoon, according to an EPA union official.

The exact same message will be sent to other agency workforces, a White House authorities said. Across the US government, the most recent information shows there are more than 220,000 employees on probation.

“As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency can instantly terminate you pursuant to 5 CFR § 315.804,” the EPA email to probationary staff members reads. “The process for probationary elimination is that you get a notification of termination, and your employment is ended instantly.”

“Each employee’s status will be identified separately,” the email adds.

The email likewise spells out an appeals process employees can require to see if they are eligible for extra protection.

The method resembles how Elon Musk, now a crucial Trump consultant, managed layoffs when he bought Twitter – make a new e-mail alias (in this case, notice@epa.gov) and then send mass termination letters to everyone on it.

The US Office of Personnel Management declined to comment, and the White House and EPA did not respond to ask for extra comment.

The EPA union authorities said these probationary employees aren’t the like at-will workers; they have less defense than tenured workers, but they have rights to appeal.

The union authorities stated EPA will have to make a finding as to every single probationary employee that is being release – either that their performance is bad or that they had a disciplinary issue. and those with tenure have additional layers of protection. Attorneys who work at the EPA and AFGE, the union representing a big number of EPA staff members, are counseling individuals who are probationary employees on how to react to these e-mails and waiting to see what further action is taken.

The EPA e-mails come after the Office of Personnel Management sent a mass e-mail to federal employees Tuesday night telling them if they resign now, they would be paid through September 30 although they likely would not need to work, or might a minimum of keep working from another location.

The e-mail defined that those who pick not to choose into the program – referred to as a “deferred resignation” deal – can’t be provided “full assurance concerning the certainty” of their position or agency moving forward. It added that, should their job be eliminated, they “will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the defenses in place for such positions.”

The email, sent out from a brand-new government alias HR1@opm.gov, included the subject line “Fork in the Road,” the same subject line of a final notice message Musk sent to his workers at Twitter in 2022.

Musk has made clear in recent months that a top concern for employment the Department of Government Efficiency, which he is helming, would be to rid the federal workforce of employees considered as underperforming.

Marie Owens Powell, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, stated spirits at EPA was suffering.

“It’s bad, it’s most likely the worst I have actually ever seen,” she stated. “I’ve never ever seen anything like this. Literally every day, folks are afraid to turn their computer systems on. They don’t know what message will be coming out next.”

Mass layoffs of probationary workers might disproportionately affect more youthful employees, said Rob Shriver, acting director of OPM under President Joe Biden.

“There has actually been a longstanding battle to get younger people interested in civil service,” Shriver said. “We worked difficult to fix that, working with roughly 13% more people under the age of 30 in 2024 than 2023.