In August, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees and supporters protested the agency's spending cuts outside its headquarters. Hundreds more employees were laid off over the weekend.
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Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg/Getty Images
About 600 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff were laid off over the long weekend as part of wider push by the Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal workforce during the government shutdown.
It was not an easy process. More than 1,300 CDC employees were notified Friday that they had lost their jobs. Many of them were laid off due to the quarantine, and this was discovered only after Russell Vaught, director of the Office of Management and Budget, published on X that “RIFs have begun.”
The next day, about 700 employees received emails withdrawing those layoff notices, according to data collected by the National Public Health Coalition, a group of former CDC employees.
Arin Melton Backus, a public health specialist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office of Smoking and Health who has been on administrative leave for months, was one of them. This was the third time this year that she received notice of termination.
“We have no idea why some programs were canceled and others were retained,” Backus said at a press conference held Tuesday by NPHC. “At the moment it seems like there is chaos and a lack of transparency.”
On Tuesday filing a lawsuitThe Department of Health and Human Services attributed some of the layoffs and quick reversals to “data inaccuracies and processing errors.”
When the dust settled, about 600 CDC employees were laid off over the weekend, according to the former CDC employee group and AFGE Local 2883, the union that represents CDC workers.
Those laid off include CDC employees who inform Congress and those who work on health statistics and chronic disease. This also affected CDC support staff, such as CDC library staff and those providing mental health support. after the attack at CDC's main campus in August, as well as human resources employees who were called back from leave to lay off colleagues and members of their own team.
HHS declined to confirm the number or groups affected by this round of layoffs, but Andrew Nixon, director of public affairs, said the furloughed employees were “classified as non-essential.”
The court filing states that on October 10, a total of 982 employees were purposefully terminated from HHS, including agencies such as Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Office of Strategic Preparedness and Response, in addition to the CDC.
The National Federal Workers' Union is challenging the legality of these and other dismissals.
“These illegal layoffs of our union members during the federal government shutdown are a brutal attack on hardworking Americans and jeopardize the livelihoods, health and safety of our members and communities,” said Yolanda Jacobs, health public affairs specialist at the CDC and president of AFGE Local 2883, speaking at the press conference. union on Tuesday.
The recent round of cuts has increased the flow of workers leaving the CDC this year due to previous layoffs, early retirements and resignations. Since January, the CDC has lost about 3,000 employees, or a quarter of its workforce, according to the union.
Recent cuts have eliminated the entire staff of the CDC's Washington office, eroding a long-standing support system for congressional officials.
“CDC has worked directly with Congress for decades to help constituents by providing data, expertise and knowledge when needed,” said Dr. John Brooks, who retired last year as the CDC's chief medical officer for HIV prevention, at an NPHC news conference. “These layoffs mean Congress no longer has a means of directly accessing the agency it funds when it needs information or briefings.”
Outside the Washington office, CDC policy experts who help provide briefings and answer questions from Congress have also been laid off, according to NPHC.
Overall, Brooks said, cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) staff and budget under the Trump administration are undermining the nation's public health infrastructure. “Many experts, including myself, are concerned that we are no longer prepared for the next major outbreak or disaster due to the Trump administration's ongoing erosion of our nation's ability to respond to public health emergencies.”
State and local health departments are feeling the effects. When faced with problems such as food poisoning outbreaks or hospital-acquired infections, they have traditionally turned to the CDC for help.
“Sometimes that help might be that we're going to send a few people to help you investigate it. Sometimes it may be talking to someone who is a world expert on a particular type of infection or exposure,” said Dr. Karen Remley, a former CDC official and former Virginia health commissioner, at an NPHC press conference. “No one is answering the phone now.”
In an email, HHS's Nixon characterized the federal health care infrastructure as a “bloated bureaucracy” and said, “HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative organizations to make the agency easier for the American people.”
