The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week fired its previously reinstated probationary workers, including many who worked at local facilities in Narragansett and Woods Hole.
NOAA employees in Rhode Island and Massachusetts told The Publics Radio that they received a mass email on Thursday informing them their jobs had been terminated 鈥� again. The NOAA firings were also reported by and .
Until Thursday, the employees had been in a state of paid limbo. But the March 17 order that reinstated the fired NOAA employees to a form of paid leave 鈥渋s no longer in effect,鈥� according to an email shared with The Public鈥檚 Radio. The U.S. Department of Commerce鈥檚 general counsel in Washington, D.C. said in the email that 鈥渢he Department is reverting your termination action to its original effective date.鈥�
鈥淓veryone I know who was in my situation has received the same message,鈥� said Sarah Weisberg, a fisheries biologist formerly with NOAA鈥檚 Northeast Fisheries Science Centers in Rhode Island. 鈥淓veryone who had been reinstated,鈥欌�� she said, 鈥渉as now been un-reinstated.鈥�
Janet Coit, a former NOAA administrator who was terminated in late January, said more than 800 probationary employees across the agency lost their jobs. Another 400 NOAA employees took voluntary resignation offers, she said. Between the two forms of cuts, Coit said NOAA has lost roughly 10 percent of what used to be a 12,000 employee workforce.
across 20 agencies were fired by President Trump鈥檚 administration in February in the name of government efficiency. The employees were then re-hired and placed on paid leave after a that the mass termination was unlawful.
The latest termination notices follow a ruling Wednesday by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia that . The decision cleared the way for the Trump administration to re-fire federal probationary workers, meaning employees in their first or second year on the job, or who have been recently promoted to new positions.
It鈥檚 unclear if other agencies besides NOAA have already moved to re-fire probationary workers. A probationary employee named Drew who relocated to Rhode Island to work at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Narragansett, said Friday that he had not received another termination notice, though he was anticipating one soon. (The Public鈥檚 Radio agreed to use only his first name, because he worries speaking publicly could hurt his chances to work in government again.)
The latest termination notices also raised doubts about whether the re-fired employees will receive any compensation for the weeks since mid-March when they were on paid administrative leave. The letter, signed by Acting General Counsel John K. Guenther, said that the Department 鈥渨ill waive any indebtedness created by the court鈥檚 order that you be paid beyond your termination date.鈥�
This story was originally published by. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
