ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
Last week, more employees across the federal government received termination notices as the Trump administration forged ahead with its plan to drastically reduce the federal workforce. One agency hit hard by layoffs was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Taylor Sonne was a compliance examiner at CFPB based in Houston, Texas.
TAYLOR SONNE: My job was basically traveling across America physically to financial institutions and really examining, making sure that they're treating people fairly.
LIMBONG: He'd been working at the CFPB for 11 months, just one month shy of the end of his probationary period when he found out he'd lost his job.
SONNE: Everyone pretty much got fired via a mail merge form that was blasted out to everyone that, in my opinion, wasn't very accurate. It sort of touched on points of merit. However, you know, all of us have gotten very high regards and performance reviews, and we're all very hardworking people.
LIMBONG: Sonne and his colleagues are weighing what happens next. There could be opportunities for recourse, like filing an appeal if they believe they were fired for partisan political reasons. But for now, Sonne is processing the loss of his job and what mass layoffs could mean for the future of the CFPB.
SONNE: I was incredibly happy to be able to protect consumers on a federal level. It truly is a nonpartisan mission, which is unfortunate that it's been so heavily politicized. It's really something that the American people can't afford to lose.
LIMBONG: Thousands, likely tens of thousands, of federal workers have lost their jobs, with many more expected to follow. NPR's Andrea Hsu has been talking to federal workers who still have jobs about what they're going through. She's here now. Hey, Andrea.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Hey.
LIMBONG: All right. So there's been so much disruption, so much chaos. How are people reacting to the layoffs?
HSU: Well, there's a lot of distress. You know, I'm hearing from federal employees from all over the country, actually, who have never seen anything like this. You know, a number of people have described it as a hostile takeover, a coup by someone that they say, you know, we didn't elect. They see a lot of this as Elon Musk's doing. Of course, you know, he's the Tesla founder who's now advising President Trump.
And, you know, a lot of these people, they went into government jobs because they wanted to serve the American people. They're doing critical work, things like serving our veterans or bringing innovation to agriculture or getting small businesses off the ground. You know, one person wrote to me, we are hardworking, patriotic people. Another person said, you know, please help tell our stores so that the country can see that we are not enemies, and we're not political actors. We vote both red and blue. And this person went on to say, we're regular people trying to figure out how we're going to survive.
And, Andrew, you know, the effects of what's happening go beyond government. You know, the spending freezes that the administration has implemented affect nonprofits, government contractors. So there are people all over the country who are feeling the effects of what's happening.
LIMBONG: You know, at the same time, like, I understand that, you know, these workers want to get their story out. But they're in this weird limbo, right? And I imagine because of the precarity of their situation, they don't want to talk on the record, necessarily.
HSU: Yeah. A lot of them are writing and say, please, please don't, you know, mention my name. You know, people are incredibly fearful. They are fearful of losing their jobs. They're fearful of you know, somehow being retaliated against by this administration. I was able to talk to some people last week at a rally that was held right outside the U.S. Capitol. It was organized by labor groups.
So there are federal workers who also have elected positions within their labor unions, and they feel somewhat protected speaking in that capacity. And one person I met is Sheria Smith. She's an attorney with the Department of Education, and she's also president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. That's the union that represents about 2,800 Education Department employees. And here's what Sheria Smith said. This was before the layoffs began.
SHERIA SMITH: We have a very chaotic situation, a toxic work environment for the last three weeks. We're concerned about what will happen to the services that we provide if we're not allowed to work.
HSU: And, Andrew, the services she's talking about, you know, the Department of Education has people who help with things like financial aid and special education. And, you know, recent hires in those departments were among dozens of probationary employees that we heard had gotten laid off last week. And Smith herself is an attorney in the Office of Civil Rights. That's the office that makes sure that students from elementary school all the way up into college, they get the educational accommodations that they are entitled to under the law. So Sheria Smith is really worried that if this downsizing continues, she's worried about what's going to happen to the families who need help.
SMITH: We have tens of thousands current complaints open. And if we are eliminated, those are Americans that will not receive services. Currently in the Office for Civil Rights, American citizens can file a one-page free complaint. They do not need an attorney, and they will be helped by attorneys like myself, who have Ivy League degrees, for free.
LIMBONG: I can't imagine that kind of work was going to continue if, you know, Trump and DOGE crew, like, continue at this sort of clip.
HSU: Yeah. You know, she is really worried if it's going to continue. She's even said there's talk about moving the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights to the Justice Department. So she wonders if regular people will still have the ability to take their complaints to someone in the government. And yeah - and she says that dozens of people in her office, in the Office of Civil Rights, were put on paid administrative leave already after Trump signed that executive order banning DEI programs in the federal government. She says these were people just doing their regular jobs, not running any kind of DEI-specific initiative.
LIMBONG: You know, it does seem like the Trump administration is pursuing, like, multiple paths all at once for downsizing the government, right? Like you just mentioned, there's that crackdown on DEI. There are the layoffs of probationary employees. But also, there's the requirement that everyone return to office full time, you know, ending telework. How's that going?
HSU: Yeah. That is also underway, and it's also, like all of this, like, quite chaotic. You know, some employees have been given dates to return to the office. Others, including, you know, people who have been fully remote, have been told they need to go back to an office, but where is still unclear. A number of federal workers who are covered by unions - by their collective bargaining agreements, you know, they do have telework policies written into these contracts. And at first, it seemed like the Trump administration was going to honor those. But then the administration released this new memo saying, well, agencies have the right to set telework policies, and those collective bargaining agreements will not be enforced.
So the unions are preparing to fight this. I talked with Rich Couture. He's president of AFGE Council 215. That's the union representing workers at the Social Security Administration. You know, they just signed a five-year contract right before Thanksgiving that had a pretty generous telework agreement in it. And, you know, Couture says, if that's not going to be honored, people are going to leave. They know this because they did surveys around telework, you know, while they were negotiating that contract.
RICH COUTURE: We could lose potentially 50% of our workforce to attrition. Thirty percent of our members are eligible to retire right now. Others would just seek other employment, leave the agency altogether.
HSU: And I pressed him a little bit on this, Andrew, because, you know, you always hear members of Congress complain that Americans aren't getting good service, you know, for things like Social Security 'cause people aren't showing up in the office. And Rich Couture said, you know, actually, they have seen improved productivity with some of these telework policies in place. And he says, besides, you know, the people who are teleworking, they're not the ones who provide the face-to-face service anyway. He gave an example of the people who answer phones.
COUTURE: Our 800-number workers don't ever see anybody in person. They answer the phones all day. Every call they take is monitored - how long they're on that call, how long they're not on the phone. Everything is tracked. Everything's monitored. They know how productive those workers are.
HSU: You know, so he's worried that this light-speed downsizing of the government could lead to a collapse of their ability to, you know, serve the public. And he's also really worried about what he calls the real possibility of workers at the Social Security Administration being replaced by artificial intelligence.
COUTURE: Especially if they're closing offices, especially if we're shedding staff. And I think the American people need to start asking questions in terms of whether that's in their interest. Do they want to talk to a human being when they want to file for their retirement benefits, or do they want to talk to a robot?
LIMBONG: You know, I think anybody who's worked anywhere ever for a long time, if you asked them, really, they'd be like, OK, I see there's some waste. There's some bloat here, right? I can, you know, imagine some cutting. And, you know, Trump was elected on the promise that he'd make the government better and more efficient and smaller. Is that message resonating with any of the federal workers you've heard from?
HSU: Yeah. I would say, very, very few. I have had people say, like you said, you know, there are systems that don't work as well as they should. Things could be more efficient. Maybe there are some people who aren't being utilized to their potential. But they also say, there's a way to downsize the government, and that's not what we're seeing now. You know, people point to President Clinton. He oversaw a significant downsizing of the federal workforce, but it took place over years, and it involved, you know, studies to figure out where the cuts could be made. Right now, everything feels like it's happening on the fly. You know, Trump has been in the White House not even a month yet. And this has just been so unsettling.
I'll end with one more person I met at that rally, Aaron Barker. He's with the Transportation Safety Administration. And he's also president of the AFGE Local 554, which represents TSA officers at the Atlanta airport. You know, he told me his members are losing sleep over everything that's happening. They're worried about their jobs, their families. You know, they're worried about will they be able to get the government services they rely on? These are the people that are running the security checkpoints at the airport. So probably not the people you want distracted by everything going on. So, you know, Aaron Barker had this request.
AARON BARKER: When you go through the airport, be kind to them because it's so much going on, and they're stressed beyond what you could ever fathom. So be kind to them. Give them some encouraging words. If you are a supporter of federal workers, let them know that you stand in solidarity with them.
HSU: You know, a lot of people might hear federal workers and think Washington, D.C. But actually, 80% of federal workers work outside the Washington, D.C. area. So chances are pretty good that, you know, everyone listening might know someone who's a federal worker - someone in your community or at your church, or maybe it's your neighbor. And so these are all people who are going through a lot right now.
LIMBONG: That's Andrea Hsu, NPR's labor and workplace correspondent. Thanks, Andrea.
HSU: Thank you, Andrew.
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