The Office of Personnel Management, the agency that manages the federal civilian work force and is coordinating an effort by the Trump administration to drastically reduce the size of the federal work force, laid off dozens of its probationary employees on Thursday, according to people familiar with the move.
The exact number of workers who were fired is unclear, but two people at the agency familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that those affected included employees who had worked there for less than two years, including Schedule A workers — individuals, including veterans, with severe physical, psychiatric, or intellectual disabilities.
The firings come a day after the Trump administration moved forward with a deferred resignation program for federal workers, which encouraged employees to resign in exchange for being paid through September, though Congress has not approved any funding for it. The Office of Personnel Management said that about 75,000 workers had accepted that offer, and that the incentive program was closed to new entries after a judge allowed the program to proceed.
Other federal agencies have made moves toward firing their probationary workers — recent hires who do not receive the same protections that members of the civil service usually do.
The Trump administration has collected information from agencies like the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and others about their new hires, raising the specter of more mass firings in coming weeks. More than 1,100 Environmental Protection Agency employees who had been hired in the last year and still had probationary status were warned last week that they could be fired at any time.
At the General Services Administration, which manages the federal real estate portfolio and much of the government’s tech work force, widespread layoffs have already begun, focusing on probationary hires.
The post Trump Administration Fires Dozens at Federal Personnel Office appeared first on New York Times.
