USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them
An Agriculture Department spokesperson told NBC News that officials are "working to swiftly rectify the situation."
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How do you accidentally sack someone?
You have to specifically choose a person, presumably with an actual reason for sacking them, then reach out to them specifically to inform them of their sacking.
In my country you also require a valid reason for doing so, you can't just randomly sack someone, I imagine in this case it would be being made redundant.
So, you decide your staff are no longer required and if their contract allows you to let them go (or you just pay the big severance or whatever), okay cool.
Then you.... change your mind? What?
That'd be a deeply incompetent employer. Like, buffoon levels. I wouldn't go back to working for someone like that. If nothing else, they've shown how little they care about their staff. Not worth it.
These are the same people who argue you can "accidentally" have sex with someone, it's not rape!
Elon Musk has a consistent pattern of doing exactly this over and over.
It's about the 6th separate incident in gov I've heard of in the last few weeks.
Doesn't sound very... Efficient.
The morons fired every federal employee who was classified as "probationary", in multiple departments. This is all employees with less than 90 days in their current role, but because these idiots don't know anything about anything, they assumed it meant new hires only.
Others have pointed out that the US largely practices "at will" employment (IIRC, only one state doesn't), and that's true, but government workers do tend to have stronger protections than private sector workers. But probationary status is a whole other can of worms.
Just a point of clarification: the probationary period of federal employees is much longer than 90 days. For most, it's one year. Some roles are two years.
Thanks for the correction. I haven't worked in the government, so my knowledge is a bit limited.
In my country you also require a valid reason for doing so, you can't just randomly sack someone
In the US you can be fired at any time for any reason (or no reason), including "I'm having a bad day and I don't like you." Randomly sacking people is Trump's thing, he had a show about it and everything.
Which is why anti-discrimination laws are entirely toothless. “I didn’t fire you because you are black/female/Muslim, I fired you because I stubbed my toe on the way into the office!”
Like, unless they put into text “we fired this person because X,” you’re never getting any form of justice.
I watched my manager at a shitty fast food job toss a black guy’s application - “because the last one caused problems.” Unless you get enough people to to testify it’s a pattern - enough people willing to risk their jobs for justice that likely won’t happen - there’s nothing for it. Fuck, I lost my last job pretty much immediately after bringing up some Title 9 violations and asking for some accommodations for a medical condition - the retaliation is obvious but not enough to make a lawyer happy.
I guess in federal spaces, there are technically more protections, but we aren’t operating under the rule of law right now. Rules only exist if they are enforced.
The federal government actually does have protections for people who are not in the probationary period, which is why they only fired people in the probationary period, because if they tried to fire tenured employees they'd have a much bigger fight. But that probationary period can last from 1 to 2 years, and also kicks in again for anyone who starts in a new position.
So you can get promoted and then fired at any time for 1-2 years afterwards? Sounds like a shit setup. And maybe a way to easily purge people (outside of the Trump nonsense).
It is a shit setup. Don’t even get us started on the complete lack of protection you get outside of a government job when you switch from being hourly to salary. I am all for working hard and going above and beyond to get a job done. However it’s exploitation when my employer pays me for 40 hours of work a week but expects me to work 45 hours and justifies it by saying the expectation is pretty light considering other places.
Likely the kind of people working for the government on things like bird flu are, at least in part, doing it for the greater good, rather than exclusively personal benefit (i.e. pay, status or even stability). That kind of person might be more willing to work for a perceived bad employer than you or I, since that employer - for the time being, anyway - is likely to have more reach (for information or material dispensation) than most any other entity.
edit: Also, even if they are motivated purely by personal benefit, this seems like it would put them in a pretty strong negotiating position. They could use the situation to get themselves a cushy contract while finding something more reliable.
