At least 600 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are receiving permanent termination notices in the wake of a recent court decision that protected some CDC employees from layoffs but not others.
The notices went out this week and many people have not yet received them, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 2,000 dues-paying members at CDC.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday did not offer details on the layoffs and referred an AP reporter to a March statement that said restructuring and downsizing were intended to make health agencies more responsive and efficient.
AFGE officials said they are aware of at least 600 CDC employees being cut.
But “due to a staggering lack of transparency from HHS,” the union hasn’t received formal notices of who is being laid off,” the federation said in a statement on Wednesday.
The permanent cuts include about 100 people who worked in violence prevention. Some employees noted those cuts come less than two weeks after a man fired at least 180 bullets into the CDC’s campus and killed a police officer.
“The irony is devastating: The very experts trained to understand, interrupt and prevent this kind of violence were among those whose jobs were eliminated,” some of the affected employees wrote in a blog post last week.
On April 1, the HHS officials sent layoff notices to thousands of employees at the CDC and other federal health agencies, part of a sweeping overhaul designed to vastly shrink the agencies responsible for protecting and promoting Americans’ health.
Many have been on administrative leave since then — paid but not allowed to work — as lawsuits played out.
A federal judge in Rhode Island last week issued a preliminary ruling that protected employees in several parts of the CDC, including groups dealing with smoking, reproductive health, environmental health, workplace safety, birth defects and sexually transmitted diseases.
But the ruling did not protect other CDC employees, and layoffs are being finalized across other parts of the agency, including in the freedom of information office. The terminations were effective as of Monday, employees were told.
Affected projects included work to prevent rape, child abuse and teen dating violence. The laid-off staff included people who have helped other countries to track violence against children — an effort that helped give rise to an international conference in November at which countries talked about setting violence-reduction goals.
“There are nationally and internationally recognized experts that will be impossible to replace,” said Tom Simon, the retired senior director for scientific programs at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention.
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