Federal Workers Mobilize Against Musk’s and Trump’s ‘Corporate Coup’

Federal employee union members have been speaking out, rallying, and suing, as agency after agency has been hit by Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE)—a private unaccountable entity which has been demanding access to all government records while spreading wild lies about waste and fraud.

Around 20,000 workers have been summarily fired so far.

Federal workers raised the alarm at over 30 “Save our Services” rallies around the country Wednesday, including in New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Philadelphia, Denver, Boston, Boise, Chattanooga and Chicago.

Workers protesting included those fired, or under threat, at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the IRS, Social Security, the Veterans Administration, and an alphabet soup of other agencies that do everything from running national parks to warning residents about impending floods.

Protesters warned of the potential privatization of essential services like Social Security and veteran’s healthcare, and the elimination of consumer and environmental protections.

Join the F.U.N.

“The only way we have out of this is if the federal workforce on the front lines puts out a call to the broader labor movement and enters the streets and makes this a political crisis that they cannot manage,” said Chris Dols, president of IFTPE Local 98 at the Army Corps of Engineers, at one of three Wednesday Save Our Services rallies in New York City.

Dols is one of the leaders of a new group, the Federal Unionists Network, which called the protests. Using lists they had been building for months and contacts made through the explosion of energy over the past weeks, members called federal union activists around the country, asking them to bottom-line local actions. Many of these rallies were endorsed by local or national chapters of federal worker unions.

“Everybody right now and for the weeks or months or whatever it takes needs to become an organizer,” said Dols. “If you’re a federal employee and you don’t know what your union is, get involved with the FUN, we’ll help you figure it out. If you don’t have a union, we’ll help you learn how to organize one.”

Indiscriminate firings

First in line for firing, according to the administration, are 200,000 workers who are on probation, usually because they have been in their role for less than 12 months.

“It’s stressful because you have probationary people that are learning their job and they’re getting emails with no notice that they’re terminated, just ‘Goodbye’,” said Jaclyn Imperati, an AFGE member who works at the Executive Office of Immigration Review in New York City.

“You just changed your life, you left a job to come here, and now you’re being terminated. Wow.”

At many agencies, workers report they were put on “administrative leave” in letters that said the worker’s “ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency.” The letter was boilerplate: Workers received them even when they had superb evaluations.

The language may be designed to avoid lawsuits by claiming that the firings were for cause. However, some workers said the letters didn’t even include their names, instead containing fields that said ‘firstname’ and ‘lastname.’

Imperati said that people are turning to the union due to the threats. “We doubled our membership in our building the day that all this started happening,” she said.

“I think working for the federal government has always been viewed as something that’s protected,” she said. “You can’t just be fired at will. You can’t just be fired because somebody had a bad day.”

Now, she said, her co-workers see “the union is the only protection you have from being terminated without cause.” (Federal workplaces are open shop so workers don’t have to join the union.)

Jobs frozen

The Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers and strangulation of federal funding continued this week at the Federal Housing Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the Administration for Children and Families, which is responsible for the Head Start program, which offers early childhood education and nutrition services for low income families.

Some laid off workers are responsible for checking medical devices to make sure they’re safe. Others work on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Around 400 FAA employees were fired: They do maintenance of FAA navigation equipment. FHA workers help people get mortgages who otherwise can’t get them.

On top of the firings, no-one is being hired to fill existing vacancies. “Veterans Affairs, the EPA, the Department of Justice, there’s a hiring freeze across the government,” said American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) staffer Timothy McLaughlin. He said there were already 50,000 vacancies in the VA system.

“There’ve been thousands of probationary employees and potential hires who have been told, you’re not coming, we’re retracting our offers,” said McLaughlin. “I’ve gotten calls from people crying. This is ruining people’s lives.”

Many of Musk’s and Trump’s actions are being held up in court or walked back as constituents raise hell. Some workers who were told their jobs no longer existed have later been told to come back.

Medical research halted

“Hands off our research!” was the message at a 500-person rally at the University of Washington in Seattle. Members of Auto Workers Local 4121, the University of Washington Academic Workers, rallied against funding freezes that are bringing their research to a halt and causing layoffs.

“I’m proud that I will have contributed something to helping leukemia patients in the future,” said Philip Creamer, a Hematology and Oncology postdoc researcher at the rally, “But I can’t do this without a stable source of funding and so much of that comes from the NIH.”

The union plans a rally at the Department of Health and Human Services and nationwide phonebanking aimed at lawmakers.

NIH Fellows United, a new union at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, issued a demand to bargain over the hiring freeze, bans on travel, cancellation of all meetings, and a “communications blackout,” the union said.

“The law is clear, the Trump administration can’t unilaterally change the terms of our employment,” said Marjorie Levinstein, who is on the union’s bargaining committee and researches drug addiction. They are members of Auto Workers Local 2750.

Dols, in New York, urged unionists to think bigger than contract violations: “Sure, our union contracts are being scrapped. They’re breaking the deals and that’s awful. They’re really breaking laws. But the real message is to save our services, because there is no Social Security without Social Security workers. There is no environmental protection without the Environmental Protection Agency and the people who work for it.”

Wholesale data theft

“How do you spell corruption?” “E-L-O-N!” workers chanted at the Federal Plaza at a noon picket in New York City.

Workers at the CFPB, at Social Security, and at IRS, charged that Musk’s minions have been grabbing the public’s data with no oversight or accountability.

Spencer Gould, vice president of NTEU chapter 47 at the IRS in New York said that the unions are the front line of defense as Elon Musk and Trump “are grabbing the personal data of every American, to do who knows what for who knows who.”

“They are smashing the institutions that are the parts of government that house the democracy of our country,” he said. Musk is head of a private entity, DOGE, and neither DOGE nor his appointment to lead it was brought before Congress.

Protecting consumer protection

A fight over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), formed after the 2008 financial meltdown, is in the courts. The Trump administration installed a director who ordered the agency to shut down, but the Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) sued, and a court order is currently keeping it open. Musk prematurely tweeted “CFPB RIP” on February 7.

CFPB worker Jasmine Hardy explained her job at a New York rally: “When there are credit reporting errors, preventing people from getting access to credit, we can fix those errors.” Hardy is Vice President of NTEU Chapter 335. She said it’s hard to track down the records and set things straight, “but that’s what I’m going to do, because I want to work for the American people.”

Hardy said that the CFPB has won back $21 billion for the public since it started, by limiting excessive bank overdraft fees, credit card fees, and fees banks like to charge just because they can. Bankers and billionaires, naturally, don’t like the agency.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who championed the creation of the Bureau, suggested that Musk’s animosity comes from his plan to create “X Money” as part of a plan to make X (formerly Twitter) the “everything app.”

“Guess which agency would be making sure that Elon’s new project couldn’t scam you or steal your sensitive personal data?” said Warren, “The CFPB.”

“The division of powers and the checks and balances have somehow fallen apart,” said Dols. “It is now up to us to follow through on our oath to the Constitution, to the government we serve, and the public we serve, to make sure that Elon Musk does not get away with this.”

Joe DeManuelle-Hall and Danielle Smith contributed reporting. This piece was originally published in Labor Notes.