The Department of Health and Human Services has decided to effectively block the payout of overdue bonuses to many of its laid-off employees, multiple health officials say. The bonuses were tied to high performance by the workers last year, before they were cut from the department.
“If the savings from the layoffs were pennies from the HHS budget, this is hundredths of a penny,” one current federal health agency employee said of the move.
While bonus payments usually go out in April to high-performing federal employees, the department had stalled them from being deposited. Now payouts are scheduled to go out after June 2, under the new decision.
This timing prevents the money from being paid out to people who were laid off or took buyouts or early retirement. Most of the workers laid off at the department are still on paid leave under federal policies, ahead of an official “separation” date scheduled for June 2.
“We apologize to those of you who were expecting bonuses and truly wish we could have delivered them,” human resources officials wrote to the staff of one HHS agency, in an email obtained by CBS News.
An appeal sought by some agency officials was “unsuccessful in having it overturned,” according to the email.
“That’s f****d up. They worked hard all last year for those awards,” a federal health agency employee said in a message.
The decision applies to all agencies and divisions that rely on the department’s central human resources office, the Staffing and Recruitment Operations Center, under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
This includes laid-off employees of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, as well as a number of standalone offices within the department.
A handful of larger agencies where human resources offices are not directly controlled by the department, like at the National Institutes of Health, were able to pay out the bonuses.
Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.
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