On Feb. 19, crowds of former and current staffers at the Department of Health and Human Services protested outside the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. As ABC News’s Hannah Demissie and Selina Wang reported on Wednesday, “Bracing the frigid temperatures, crowds of former and current federal workers protested the deep cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday, warning it will permanently set back scientific progress in the United States. The protest comes as thousands have been laid off across HHS and President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency try to shrink the size of the federal government.”
Demissie and Wang reported that “A woman who was just laid off as a food safety chemist with the Food and Drug Administration told ABC News the cuts to the agency will make the food supply more dangerous. ‘I think it’s going to make it a lot harder to test as much as we’re testing,’ she said. ‘We randomly sample food all over the country for different things, and when there are less people to do the work, I think people are going to get sick.’ She recently graduated with her doctorate and was responsible for developing new chemical methods to measure how sources such as plastic could transfer into foods.’” The dismissed FDA employee added that “I have felt a lot of things in the past couple of days. Yes, grief is probably the biggest one,” the woman told ABC News, adding that the FDA was her first job. “I probably told my friends and family that I was a lifer in the federal government, like I had found the place that I wanted to build my career because I found such purpose in being able to protect Americans and our food supply.”
Meanwhile, NBC News 4 Washington’s Mauricio Casillas on Wednesday quoted Ian Fucci, a research fellow with the National Institutes of Health, who told him that “It’s scary, and seeing your colleagues go is just devastating. These people you’ve been working with for years, just gone, and those projects, those collaborations – just gone. It’s disorienting and it’s terrifying.”
Casillas reported that “Demonstrators outside of HHS building were joined by Democratic lawmakers including Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who said he’s concerned about what these firings mean for the future of medical research in the country. ‘I’ve spoken to constituents who have been terminated because they’re on probation, and they’re on probation because they were promoted,’ he said to demonstrators at the rally. ‘In other words, they’re terminated because they were just promoted because they were doing such a good job. That’s stupid.’ Demonstrators also spoke about their concerns over the fate of international scientists, whose futures in the country could be cut short if they lose their jobs,” Casillas added.
The demonstration came in the wake of chaotic mass firings and a lack of any consistent communication to federal employees about what was going on. As the Washington Post’s Rachel Roubein, Lena H. Sun, and Carolyn Y. Johnson reported on Feb. 18, “The nation’s health agencies were upended over the weekend by a confusing, slow-motion rollout of terminations that left staff worried about the future of various projects, including those to improve maternal health, discover new cancer treatments and provide help for 9/11 responders. Several thousand probationary employees across the Department of Health and Human Services were notified they would be terminated after four weeks of leave — fired in what some are calling a “Valentine’s Day massacre.” The termination notices, which arrived over the weekend, capped a chaotic week of speculation about when the cuts would come and who would be affected.”
The Post reporters noted that “The terminations had a swift impact. The Food and Drug Administration’s top food official resigned Monday, citing the “indiscriminate firing” of 89 staff members from the agency’s food program and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s rhetoric toward staff. ‘I was looking forward to working to pursue the Department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,’ Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods, wrote in a letter — reviewed by The Washington Post — to the agency’s acting commissioner. “It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.’ Overall, several thousand people from the more than 80,000 workers employed at HHS agencies were told they were terminated. All were probationary, meaning they had just a year or two on the job or had recently been promoted. Many worked on issues critical to consumers, such as improving health care, regulating food packaging or responding to infectious-disease outbreaks.”
What’s more, they wrote, “In interviews, they described a bewildering process that often required them to inform their own bosses they had been terminated. The termination messages cite poor job performance, according to more than half a dozen letters from various agencies obtained by The Post. The people who were fired disputed that characterization. ‘Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment in the agency,’ the termination notices state. The cuts swept across health agencies such as an emergency preparedness office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the FDA. Patient advocacy groups — as well as current and former employees — expressed deep alarm over the cuts.”
And they quoted “a coalition of patient groups, including the Friends of Cancer Research and the American Diabetes Association,” which released a statement that included this: “The cumulative effects of threatened cuts to federal health research funding and forced departures at our nation’s premier health agencies will put our global leadership and our nation’s health at risk.”
https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/policy-value-based-care/article/55269562/federal-workers-protest-hhs-staffing-cuts-in-front-of-hhs-headquarters
