The Trump administration’s promised shutdown layoffs are arriving at the Department of Energy today under a cloud of uncertainty.
While nearly 200 energy agency employees received some form of “reduction in force” notice late last week, the reality appears more complicated. At least five offices received “general reduction in force notices,” as opposed to official layoff notices, current and former DOE staff told Latitude Media.
The language in those notices was vague, and indicated that recipients’ offices would be subject to changes — which employees understand to mean reorganizations — that would eventually impact their roles.
As of Saturday morning, however, “no one [had] actually been RIF’d,” according to one current employee. “OMB and the agency are using purposefully vague language to scare and confuse people,” they added.
Human resources representatives in at least one office told employees to plan to come into work after the long weekend. While they confirmed that no official RIF decisions had yet been made, employees understood that the notices are the first step to firings, reassignments, reorganizations, or a combination across each office.
Offices receiving the general RIF notice — and in some cases an invitation to a meeting this week indicating a RIF was on the way — included the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Office of State and Community Energy Plans, and the Office of Fossil Energy.
The National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 213, which represents DOE employees, described the RIF and reorganization notices as “another blatant attempt at illegal intimidation of the federal workforce.”
In a note sent to members just before 9pm Saturday night, the union said the administration’s tactics included “mandatory meetings being scheduled after hours, sometimes with mere minutes’ notice, on the Friday before a holiday weekend.”
Layoffs during a shutdown, which the Trump administration threatened before the ongoing shutdown even began, is highly unusual. Non-essential workers are often furloughed — meaning subject to a temporary, generally unpaid leave of absence — but their jobs typically remain secure until Congress agrees on a budget to bring them back. In this case, the White House is actively using the firing of federal workers as leverage in the GOP’s legislative fight with Congressional Democrats, which centers around healthcare.
The impending shutdown firings come at a time when DOE is already facing a severe staffing shortage, thanks in large part to the mass staff firings that took place when the Department of Government Efficiency swept through the agency earlier this year. Unofficial estimates place that exodus at more than 3,500 employees.
DOE is also short on lawyers, and is now seeking external counsel for day-to-day work, including defending against legal challenges related to award cancellations.
Even as the Trump administration moves to cancel hundreds of awards granted under the Biden administration, DOE is also looking to spend unobligated funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Earlier this month, OCED issued a solicitation for applications for funding for coal plants.
Across the federal government, roughly 4,000 federal employees reportedly received RIF notices last week. The largest trade union representing public employees is already taking legal action against the actual and potential shutdown firings. In a lawsuit filed on September 30, the day before the government shutdown was set to start, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees filed a pre-emptive lawsuit, asking a federal judge in San Francisco to block the Trump administration from carrying out the threatened firings.
The administration’s threats in the days leading up to the shutdown, the complaint states, are just one element of a “wide-ranging plan to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce.” A hearing on the AFL-CIO request for a temporary restraining order is scheduled for tomorrow morning.
