Dive Brief:
- All 954 HHS workers laid off during the government shutdown in October have been rehired, according to legal testimony from a HHS official last week.
- Pay for all workers was retroactively restored as of Nov. 21, according to Thomas Nagy Jr., HHS deputy assistant secretary for human resources.
- The firings were unusual for a government shutdown and largely viewed as a political tactic to pressure congressional Democrats into making a deal with the White House.
Dive Insight:
Boomerang firing and rehirings are becoming a trend at HHS.
In April, HHS laid off approximately 10,000 workers under the direction of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Department of Government Efficiency. In a matter of weeks, Kennedy called back hundreds of those workers, having determined they were completing important work.
The administration has also mistakenly fired workers only to ask them to return to their posts soon after. During the shutdown, for example, a glitch in the system caused approximately 700 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers to incorrectly receive reduction in force notifications, an HHS official said.
HHS workers that were rehired post-shutdown told The Hill that if Congress does not agree on a spending deal by the end of January, they expect to be laid off again.
This is especially likely because the Trump administration appears to be using layoffs as a political tactic.
When the layoffs were first announced during the second week of the shutdown HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon did not mince words about why they were occurring.
“HHS employees across multiple divisions have received reduction-in-force notices as a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown,” Nixon told Healthcare Dive last month. “HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
