About 600 CDC workers are expected to be permanently fired after latest round of cuts

Public health experts in Georgia are speaking out against furloughs at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they say have left hundreds of employees at the agency unemployed as the federal government shutdown enters its third week. Federal employees began receiving reduction-in-force notices, the technical name for layoffs, on Friday. Initially, about 1,300 […]

Public health experts in Georgia are speaking out against furloughs at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they say have impacted hundreds of employees. (File photo courtesy of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Public health experts in Georgia are speaking out against furloughs at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they say have left hundreds of employees at the agency unemployed as the federal government shutdown enters its third week.

Federal employees began receiving reduction-in-force notices, the technical name for layoffs, on Friday. Initially, about 1,300 CDC employees received notices, but many of the firings were reversed the next day. According to the National Public Health Coalition, a group of terminated CDC workers and their allies, about 600 layoffs are expected to be permanent.

The cuts initially impacted a wide range of departments, including the CDC’s flagship publication, known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the agency’s Washington office, the National Center for Health Statistics, and leaders working to contain infectious diseases like measles and Ebola. At least some of the employees in those departments have since been reinstated.

Andrew Nixon, who serves as director of communications at the HHS, said some employees “received incorrect notifications due to a system glitch.” 

HHS employees who received notices, he added, “were designated non-essential by their respective divisions.”

But Abby Tighe, a former CDC employee who serves as executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, questioned the department’s explanation for the firings. 

“These terminations were not a glitch,” she said. “It was not an innocent error made. This round of firings, as with all the others experienced at CDC in the last 10 months, was an intentional attack on the American people and the public’s health.”

Tighe’s organization, formerly known as Fired But Fighting, has repeatedly called for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign.

“We need an HHS Secretary who is ready to work with Congress and is ready to listen to the needs of constituents in the United States and who is ready to actually lead the department, and right now, we do not have that,” she said. “We would love to see Congress step in and really force HHS to have a stronger sense of leadership that is based in science and in public health expertise.”

Dr. John Brooks, a retired infectious disease specialist who once served as Chief Medical Officer for the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention, also expressed worries that cuts to the agency will leave the U.S. vulnerable to future public health emergencies.

“Many experts, including myself, are concerned that we are no longer well-prepared for the next big outbreak or disaster because of the Trump administration’s continued erosion of our nation’s ability to respond to public health emergencies,” he said.

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union which represents over 820,000 federal employees across the U.S., estimates that 3,000 workers — or nearly a quarter of the CDC’s total workforce — have left the agency since January. Yolanda Jacobs, who serves as president of AFGE Local 2883, also criticized the federal government’s firing of CDC workers.

“These reckless actions are disrupting and destroying the lives of everyday working people who are constantly being used as bargaining chips,” she said. “They deserve the same opportunity any other American deserves: The ability to put food on the table for their families, pay their rent or mortgage and not have to wake up each day wondering if they’ll be fired because they are federal employees.”

Along with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the AFGE filed a lawsuit last month challenging the mass firing of government employees during the shutdown.

“We’re going to speak up,” Jacobs said. “We’re not going to let this whole thing unfold in silence.”

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