The Trump administration laid off staff in the office that oversees safety and security at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just months after a deadly shooting at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters, agency employees and union members told NOTUS.
The cuts were made late last week as part of the administration’s move to reduce the federal workforce in response to the government shutdown.
Staff at the CDC’s Office of Safety, Security and Asset Management — including those working within the WorkLife Wellness Office and the Occupational Health and Safety Office — were among those swept up in the RIFS, a spokesperson for AFGE 2883, a union which represents workers at the CDC’s headquarters, told NOTUS.
And a CDC employee told NOTUS that the cuts to OSSAM were a “kick in the mouth” given the office’s role in responding to the attack.
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“OSSAM is particularly unsettling given that they are safety and asset management who supply us with updates about the state of campus after the shooting and basically anything regarding safety on campus,” the employee said.
The laid-off WorkLife Wellness staff included mental health support services for CDC employees, the union spokesperson said. The Office of Occupational Health and Safety ensures CDC employees are safe in the workplace, including when deployed to respond to public health emergencies.
“This administration has more than delivered on its promise to traumatize federal employees,” Yolanda Jacobs, president of the union, told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the cuts included mental health workers who were supporting CDC employees in the aftermath of the August shooting.
“A skeleton crew containing Commissioned Corps officers remains” at the WorkLife Wellness Office, the union spokesperson wrote via email.
The full effect of the cuts remains unclear. In response to questions about the scope of the cuts at OSSAM, an HHS spokesperson, Emily Hilliard, said via email, “All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions. HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
One police officer was killed in the August shooting, and the attack left employees traumatized. The shooter, who died by suicide, reportedly believed he had been injured by the COVID-19 vaccine, the safety of which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly questioned.
In an August email to CDC staff that was reviewed by NOTUS, Kennedy wrote that the shooting was a “reminder of the very human challenges public servants sometimes face.”
The RIFs at CDC were broader than those departments.. According to a Tuesday email from an HHS official that was reviewed by NOTUS, CDC lost a total of 596 personnel in last week’s RIFs.
This article has been updated with a comment from HHS.
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