Some agencies are walking back workforce cuts with critical functions at risk of failure

Some federal agencies are asking employees to reconsider their plans to leave government or requiring those it has designated for termination to come back to work, as the Trump administration seeks to avoid catastrophic interruptions to pivotal government operations. 

The Agriculture Department is already planning for reduced or ceased work in key areas such as avian influenza response, according to employees involved in those efforts, causing the administration to ask employees to reverse course and rejoin government. The Health and Human Services Department has asked some employees it just laid off to come back to work, while letting them know they will still be dismissed eventually. The about face comes after agencies have issued a litany of incentives for employees to voluntarily end their federal service or, in some cases, laid them off through a reduction in force. 

Leadership at the Agriculture Department this week sent an email to staff throughout the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service asking workers who accepted the administration’s Deferred Resignation Program—which enables them to remain on paid leave until they leave government by Sept. 30—to undo that decision. Around 16,000 USDA employees have opted into the DRP after the department offered a second window to accept it this month and some areas of APHIS, including those instrumental to managing the current bird flu outbreak, were particularly hard hit. 

The agency is discussing contingency plans, such as moving staff around from other parts of USDA, reprioritizing certain work and pausing “programs we can no longer continue,” said one employee involved in those conversations. 

If everyone who has signed up for the deferred resignation takes it—and their leave is set to kick on April 30—APHIS is planning slow down work on crop insurance for farmers who lose product to disease; payments to poultry farmers who lose their flocks due to bird flu; the licensing of veterinary products that diagnose, prevent and treat diseases; and operations at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories. 

USDA’s National Animal Health Laboratory Network office, which manages a network of labs throughout the county that provide disease surveillance and can quickly meet diagnostic needs during outbreaks, has lost half of its staff responsible for quality assurance and proficiency testing nationwide. Its Veterinary Services office is set to lose 23% of its workforce. 

APHIS has already stopped signing agreements for those who opted into the DRP and has now sent requests out to many of its workers asking them to rethink their decision. Among those receiving the email were biologists, Plant Protection Quarantine staff and veterinary medical officers, though employees in the Washington, D.C. area were excluded. In its message, USDA’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration told employees they would not be subject to the layoffs expected on a widespread basis throughout USDA in the coming weeks. 

“In this period of time when you are either considering signing the DRP 2.0 agreement or preparing to begin administrative leave on May 1, I want to let you know that as an employee working in a vital, mission critical position for APHIS, your work—and the work of your colleagues in your same position—will continue to be of paramount importance to your program, APHIS, and USDA,” the agency said in the email, a copy of which was obtained by Government Executive. “While staffing levels will be reduced in other areas, and some functional work of APHIS may be consolidated and reassigned as part of USDA's workforce optimization plans, your mission critical position will not be affected.”

Employees receiving the email were deemed as either "front-line" staff, or part of a lab or other field-based location. Their jobs would not be affected, the agency said, and APHIS was "working right now on a plan" to ensure critical staffing levels are maintained to protect its core mission. Employees who already signed an agreement can still go back on it, the agency said. 

“I want to make sure that I shared this information with you at this time and ask you to reconsider your enrollment in DRP 2.0,” the assistant secretary’s office said. 

The message was a marked reversal from USDA’s recent approach. Some department employees received 20 emails in the week the DRP window was open and, in some cases, 10 in one day, pushing them to accept the offer. In meetings and town halls across the department, leadership encouraged staff to take the deal. 

“It’s insanity,” one APHIS employee said of the sudden reversal. 

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins’ office was made aware on several occasions of the threats the workforce reductions efforts posed on operations as the incentives were being rolled out, employees said. APHIS is not currently planning to deny any employee with a signed agreement in hand from taking leave starting May 1, according to one employee briefed on the matter. 

An employee from another part of USDA that oversees the Farm Services Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service and Risk Management Agency said department leadership has also asked about the impact of staffing cuts there. The team relayed to leadership the impact would be, generally speaking, “work stoppage and delays” and suggested the department “should have asked [about the] impact beforehand.” 

Those agencies are down to essential personnel only, the staffer said, which is only sustainable for a short period of time. 

“The issue with essential is you are one deep and maxed out,” the employee said. “When that person is out, you’re screwed.” 

Don’t leave just yet

At HHS, meanwhile, employees who have already received reductions-in-force notices are being asked to report back to work for indefinite periods of time. Some employees will be expected to work past the June termination date originally laid out in their layoff notice, but will still be separated from the agency at some point. 

Impacted employees have been told their added time of employment is necessary to offload ongoing work. Most of those subject to RIFs are now sitting on paid administrative leave until their termination dates. 

Many laid off human resources staff throughout HHS have been recalled to work as their skillset is needed to process all the workforce changes underway, according to multiple employees. Acquisition personnel have also been told to continue working. NPR previously reported that HHS has called back public records and travel coordination staff, while making clear their jobs would still be eliminated eventually. 

HHS employees have been asked to be “available for an extended time to transfer knowledge or to finish projects, but will still be let go at an undetermined date,” said one worker briefed on the matter. A second employee said staff were recalled because of their specific expertise. 

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said shortly after his department laid off 10,000 employees that some of the cuts occurred by mistake, and about 25% of staff would be given their jobs back. While some select employees have been fully reinstated, it does not yet appear to have happened on anywhere near the scale Kennedy suggested. 

At the National Institutes of Health, an employee there said, some staff are facing overwhelming demands because they have been left with a “skeleton crew.” Others have little left to do, as all of their work portfolio has been cut.