‘Your RIF notice is not cancelled.’ Inside a chaotic week of massive layoffs at HHS

Chaos and confusion dominated the restructuring affecting thousands of workers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week.

Some people who were fired are being unfired, at least temporarily. Some managers don’t even know who still works for them. With human resources teams gutted, answers are extremely hard to come by. This is according to interviews with more than a dozen staff, many of whom did not share their names for fear of retaliation.

Firings began early this week. Many workers only found out they had been fired when they tried to enter the building and their security badges didn’t work.

The confusion escalated through the week. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted about a fifth of the cuts were “mistakes,” telling reporters on Thursday: “We’re reinstating them. And that was always the plan,” he said. “We talked about this from the beginning, [which] is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes.”

Among those “mistakes,” Kennedy said, was the elimination of a division of CDC that, among other things, helps public health departments around the country address lead contamination in water. A massive testing effort was about to begin in Milwaukee’s school system when CDC sent its notices.

By Friday afternoon, a day after Kennedy said the lead surveillance program was reinstated, officials in that division said they had heard nothing about resumption of the work, or plans to reinstate their jobs.

In a statement, HHS said the restructuring “is about realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.” It said roughly 10,000 employees were cut this week and the cuts focused on “redundant or unnecessary administrative positions.”

RIF’ed and then unRIF’ed?

At the National Institutes of Health, six workers in the public records office who had been terminated with their jobs set to end in 60 days, were then ordered to return to work. NPR obtained the email they received, calling them back to work — though not restoring their jobs. It reads in part:

NIH leadership has directed that you return to work and that your logical and physical access be restored immediately, if it was terminated. Your RIF notice is not cancelled. NIH leadership is actively working on these issues. We do not have additional information and neither does [Office of Human Resources] at this time…

At the Food and Drug Administration, the travel coordination staff are in a similar situation. The team was laid off and then called back in, according to one staffer. But their jobs are still eliminated — they’ll be gone again in June.

Some staff have had their firings fully rescinded. For instance, 29 of 82 workers cut at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke have been invited to return to work, including 11 senior scientists, according to an individual familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

HHS did not respond to a request for comment about the number of personnel whose firings had been reversed.

Fired or not? Hard to tell

An HHS worker at a regional office believed that she had avoided the layoffs and was able to use her badge and begin work in the office as normal on Tuesday.

After a few hours, she received an email, shared with NPR, saying that even though she hadn’t received a RIF email yet, “it is our understanding […] that you may be among the impacted employees.” She was told to take her laptop and personal items and “exit the building as soon as possible.”

Days later, her work email access stopped working, but she still hadn’t received any official notice that she was being fired.

A former head of a division at CDC, who believed all or nearly all his staff had also been placed on administrative leave pending termination, was confused about who among his colleagues remained at the agency, or what would become of the programs he and his staff ran.

Another manager and a staffer at one unit of the CDC’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health said a handful of staffers appeared to still have jobs. But with the vast majority of their colleagues missing, they can’t carry out their work anyway. They asked that their names be withheld for fear of retaliation.

Vanessa Michener, a health communication specialist at the CDC who worked on HIV outreach, was notified that her position was among those being cut on Tuesday. She said she’s stunned by the chaotic way the layoffs have unfolded.

“Haphazardly doesn’t even begin to describe it,” she said. “Instead of letting people be involved in the decision making, they just randomly wiped out entire programs.”

“I don’t understand how any average American that is seeing this unfold could see how this could possibly make sense,” she said. “It is an ungodly amount of additional waste for no reason.”

Crowdsourcing crucial information

The government is not providing precise details about the positions and functions that have been cut.

Instead, some workers have worked on crowdsourcing lists of those cut.

The picture they paint is stark. For instance, at the CDC, entire divisions were hit hard. Outside of the human resources and IT functions, some of the hardest hit appear to include the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and divisions that monitor birth defects, zoologic and infectious disease, and chronic disease — one of the areas Kennedy said is a priority for the country.

With human resources teams out in many divisions, HHS staff are also crowdsourcing advice. One document obtained by NPR advises employees not to “preemptively resign.”

“If you are laid off in a RIF you have rights, possible severance pay, and the right to receive unemployment benefits from your state agency,” it says. The document also advises employees not to blame themselves — or to harm themselves — and it links to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

On Thursday, HHS announced all contract spending must be cut by 35%. This move adds to the confusion and difficulty of those staff who remain in place to do their jobs, one CDC staffer told NPR. “Folks at CDC who are our contracting officers have been destroyed,” which means even trying to cancel contracts will be “a tall order” for the remaining staff.

“We are already just picking up the pieces,” the worker said. “It will take weeks at a minimum but likely one to two months to get in a place where we are functioning somewhat OK again.”

Fears for the future

Chanapa Tantibanchachai was among 18 people on the FDA’s press team who were fired Tuesday. Communications staff at other health agencies within HHS were also cut.

“It does not fit into ‘radical transparency,'” Tantibanchachai told NPR, referring to Kennedy’s promise for how he would run the HHS. “How can there be radical transparency when there are no communicators to do the work of providing that transparency?”

Press officers at FDA worked on designated subject matters, like food safety, vaccines, and oncology drugs, setting up interviews with reporters and subject matter experts, and updating the public on their topics.

“None of that is going to exist now,” she said, adding she didn’t know what that would mean for the future. “It’s a bad day for journalists that relied on us. It’s a bad day for the public that relies on the news stories that you all are putting out based on the information you would get from us.”

At NIH where about 1,300 employees were laid off, there’s widespread anger and despair. Most of those cut appear to have been involved in support jobs, communications, IT, human resources, those who order supplies and specialists who handle contracts and grants. These jobs are crucial for enabling scientists to search for new cures for everything from asthma, allergies and Alzheimer’s to AIDS, cancer and heart disease.

“I don’t even know where to start with the devastation that is being wrought in infectious disease in particular,” said an NIH official who did not want to be identified because of fears of retribution.

“It is going to take us more than a generation to recover, not just with the science but with the cuts to training grants and supporting mentees. And all the while, China is continuing to pour investments into these very areas … and we will quickly be eclipsed,” the official said via email.