On February 13 and 14, roughly 1,000 staffers at the Department of Energy were unceremoniously let go. The group targeted most of the agency’s “probationary” employees, meaning those who had been hired or promoted in the previous year — and represented just a sliver of the approximately 20,000 let go across the entire federal workforce.
Exactly one month later, those DOE employees are being brought back, in light of a ruling issued yesterday by the federal court of Northern California.
“You will be returned to your previous position with DOE, and to federal service effective the date of our notification,” reads the memo from acting chief human capital officer Reesha Trznadel sent to all impacted DOE employees, which was viewed by Latitude Media.
In a lawsuit brought by federal employee unions, District Judge William Alsup determined that the Trump administration’s layoff of federal probationary workers was illegal, a “sham.” The root of his argument was that the mass firings were carried out by the Office of Personnel Management essentially by fiat, rather than by the agencies themselves as the law requires. (He accused the Trump administration’s lawyers of stonewalling when asked about who directed the firings in the first place.)
As a result, he ordered DOE as well as the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs to “immediately” offer the impacted staffers their jobs back.
While the reinstated DOE employees are not necessarily directed to report for duty immediately, they are being placed on retroactive paid administrative leave, beginning the date of their firing. The practical details of bringing the employees back to work are already being worked out, according to the memo, including things like reissuing equipment and badges.
It goes on to say that the February termination will be removed from employee personnel records. And if employees decline to return, “DOE will treat such declination as a resignation from your position and federal service.”
This doesn’t mean that DOE jobs are safe indefinitely, however. Alsup clarified that individual agencies still have the right to implement their own “reduction in force” plans, as long as they follow the law when they do so. In fact, according to a memo from OPM director Russ Vought, yesterday was the government-wide deadline for executive departments and agencies to develop their own RIF plans, with a Phase 2 plan due in mid-April.
Meanwhile, there is a bit of a catch-22 underway for the employees that remain. The remote staff of at least one office have been told they’ll have to return to office in either Washington, D.C. or Golden, Colorado — before the agency finalizes its plans for further downsizing its workforce.
