Andrew Hsu
Appearances
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
Yeah, it was originally filed by several labor unions that represent federal workers who have been fired over the last several weeks. So nurses at the VA, for example, or people who worked for the Forest Service. These were employees who were still on probationary status, meaning usually their first or second year in that job.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
And a lot of them were told that they were being fired for performance reasons, even though many of them had gotten positive performance reviews and some weren't even on the job long enough to get a review.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
So the labor unions are arguing that the agencies themselves had no plans to fire these employees and only did so at the direction of the administration and specifically the Office of Personnel Management.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
Yeah, OPM is the agency that handles HR functions for the federal workforce. But to be clear, its role is to provide guidance to agencies about how to hire and fire employees. It doesn't have the authority to actually hire and fire employees of other agencies. But under this administration, OPM has taken on... far bigger role.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
For instance, you remember that mass email that went out to the entire federal workforce last weekend asking, you know, what did you do last week? That came from OPM. And in fact, this lawsuit also includes a complaint about this email.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
The unions argue that OPM exceeded its authority in asking the entire federal workforce to report back what they accomplished, and also in telling agencies to fire their probationary employees. President Trump has repeat heatedly argued that he's revamping the federal workforce in order to save American taxpayers money and to clean up fraud and waste.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
But the union's attorneys say there's a way to go about doing that legally, and this is not it.
Up First from NPR
Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
Yeah, these are six employees at different federal agencies who were fired about two weeks ago. And they were part of a separate complaint that a different set of attorneys brought to the Office of Special Counsel. That's the federal watchdog agency that's responsible for protecting federal workers from illegal actions by the government.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
So the special counsel began looking into these firings and found evidence that agencies hadn't followed proper procedures for firing them. And the special counsel asked a separate federal board to issue a stay. And on Tuesday night this week, the board granted that and ordered these six workers reinstated through April 10th so that the special counsel's investigation can continue.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
Yeah, for now. The attorneys in the case, including Michelle Berkovich, have asked the special counsel to seek relief for many thousands of probationary workers who say they were fired in the exact same way. Here's what she said.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
And the Office of Special Counsel A, they have said that they're looking into ways to address a larger group of people who have been similarly fired. The office, though, doesn't normally pursue complaints like this. So this is really unprecedented, as are the firings that led to this investigation.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
And lastly, I'll just note that this week we also saw the Trump administration issue guidance to agencies on further downsizing, on deeper cuts that are ahead. So we may continue to see litigation there.
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Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings
You're welcome.