Layouts begin with U.S. health agencies responsible for tracking disease, researching, and regulating food
Employees from the Department of Massive Health and Human Services began receiving dismissal notices Tuesday during an overhaul, and are expected to eventually lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices come just a few days after President Donald Trump moved to HHS and other institutions across the administration to collective bargaining rights.
Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The program will consolidate the agency that oversees billions of dollars in addiction services and the National Center for Community Health in a new office called Healthy America.
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, down nearly a quarter of their staff – by laying off 10,000 jobs, and another 10,000 workers retire early and voluntarily separate.
Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington predicts that cuts will have consequences when natural disasters hit or infectious diseases such as persistent measles outbreaks spread.
“They might as well rename it to the disease system because their plans put life in serious danger,” Murray said in a phone call with reporters.
In addition to federal health agencies’ layoffs, state and local health departments began cutting as HHS moved last week, with more than $11 billion withdrawn in COVID-related funds. Local and state health officials are still evaluating the impact, but some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that have been eliminated due to losses of funds, and “some of them have disappeared overnight,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of county and city health officials.
Union representatives for HHS employees received a notice Thursday that they were about to terminate 8,000 to 10,000 employees. The department’s leadership position will target positions in human resources, procurement, finance and information technology. The focus of layoffs will be on “high-cost areas” or positions that are considered “redundant.”
Kennedy criticized the department he oversaw as an inefficient “spread bureaucracy” in a video announcing the reorganization on Thursday, saying the department’s budget of $1.7 trillion per year “failed to improve American health.”
“I want to assure you now that we will do less,” Kennedy said.
HHS provided some cuts on Thursday.
__ 3,500 jobs, the agency inspects and sets safety standards for drugs, medical equipment and food.
__ 2,400 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention jobs that monitor infectious disease outbreaks and work with public health agencies nationwide.
__World Health Research Institute, 1,200 jobs in the world’s leading health and medical research institutions.
__ 300 Medicare and Medicaid Services Center jobs, which oversees the Affordable Care Act market, Medicare and Medicaid.
At the CDC, most employees have not yet unioned, but interest has risen sharply this year as the Trump administration takes steps to reduce the federal workforce. About 2,000 CDC employees in Atlanta belong to the local negotiating department of the United States Government Employees Federation, and hundreds of people who joined this week were petitioned.
But on Thursday night, Trump signed an executive order that would end collective bargaining by many federal agencies, including the CDC and other health agencies.
Some Democratic lawmakers condemn the erosion of collective bargaining rights.
“President Trump’s bold attempt to deprive most federal employees of union rights has left these workers suffering from hard protection. This will only give Elon Musk more ability to demolish the people’s government and devote the dedication to the federal government with a small amount of civil servants’ resistance – further weakening the Americans’ ability to serve the American people.
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Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed. ___
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science has received support from the Science and Education Media Group at Howard Hughes Medical School and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is responsible for all content.
