The Summary
The Trump administration has notified more than 1,000 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency that they could be dismissed immediately.
Workers who’ve been at the agency less than one year received an email last week notifying them that they had been identified as employees that were likely on a “probationary/ trial period,” according to an email reviewed by NBC News.
“As a probationary/ trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you,” the email says. “The process for probationary removal is that you receive a notice of termination, and your employment is ended immediately.”
About 1,100 employees received the email, according to Marie Owens Powell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents about 8,500 EPA staffers. Powell said she had received the list of employees from the agency.
“No probationary employee has been let go yet,” Powell said. “It was scary for people to receive the message, as you can imagine, and we’re inundated with questions from those folks. The agency obviously can dismiss probationary employees, but it has to be for cause.”
Powell added that if employees are dismissed, the union will “ensure there was a valid cause and the process was followed.”
It’s not clear how many EPA employees will be targeted for cuts. The email comes during a strong push by the Trump administration to downsize the government. It has , attempted to temporarily freeze and . EPA employees were among the federal workers who received the buyout offer, which was titled “Fork in the Road.”
“This email was one of a series of emails we’ve received since January 20th that have pretty much distracted at EPA and I’m sure at other federal agencies. It’s definitely a shock-and-awe type of attack we’re under,” Powell said.
Already, she added, union members who worked on diversity, equity and inclusion issues have been placed on administrative leave.
Molly Vaseliou, an EPA spokesperson, said that Administrator Lee Zeldin — a former New York representative who — “engaged directly with career staff across EPA’s headquarters” on his first day in office.
“The EPA is diligently implementing President Trump’s executive orders and associated guidance,” Vaseliou said in an email. “Our goal is to be open and transparent. As we work to improve efficiencies across the government, it is essential that all staff understand the law and how policy decisions may impact them. Ultimately, the goal is to create a more effective and efficient federal government that serves all Americans.”
Vaseliou did not directly answer a question about whether the agency intended to let workers who received the email go.
The email says that if a worker is terminated, their right to appeal would depend on whether they qualify as an employee under federal code, which defines employees as those who have .
But Powell said several employees with more than a year of service also received the email and contacted the union because they believed they had been included in error.
“The list is definitely flawed. Some folks with much more than a year of federal service received the email,” Powell said, adding that for EPA leaders, “this was an exercise in correcting their list.”
Nicole Cantello, the president of AFGE Local 704, another union local that represents EPA employees, said she, too, knew of several employees who were on the list but said they had more than a year of contiguous federal service.
on the email to EPA workers, which plays into a kind of whiplash for some federal employees as environmental policy ping pongs depending on which party controls the executive branch.
Cantello said the AFGE Local 704 union is “concerned the agency will conduct a mass firing of probationary employees.”
“Probationary employees are usually let go because they don’t perform well or were disciplined. We’ve never had a probationary mass firing in the 33 years I’ve been at EPA. This is unprecedented in scope and scale,” she said, adding that probationary employees have few protections.
“There will be little anyone can do about it as long as they state a reason,” Cantello said, referring to EPA leaders.
Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA staffers, said he viewed the recent transition between administrations as the most “chaotic” in the agency’s history. Symons worked as a climate adviser for the EPA from 1994 to 2001 and was at the agency when President George W. Bush assumed office after President Bill Clinton.
“That transition was defined by a different policy agendas, but not this vindictive purge of public servants who haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.
