Hundreds of government employees have been asked to come back to work after being fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE two weeks ago.
Just a fortnight ago, layoffs were made at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered by the Trump administration.
Although days later, 180 former employees were shocked to receive an email informing them to return to work.
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The subject line of the email read: “Read this email immediately.”
In the body of the note, it said: “You should return to duty under your previous work schedule. We apologize for any disruption that this may have caused.”
This is according to a report by the Associated Press.
Among those who had been removed from their positions were recent hires who were still in the probation period of their employment.
It’s not yet known how many employees are returning to their posts after having their redundancies reversed.
Fears over job security have grown in recent weeks for government staff after Musk announced that he was making mass cuts in order to shrink federal spending.
In a controversial email to all federal employees, Musk had asked them to list five things they had accomplished that week.
At the end of the email, Musk warned that ‘failure to respond will be taken as a resignation’.
Employees were instructed by cabinet secretaries not to reply to the email, which forced the billionaire to walk back his threats.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, at the time, Musk wrote: “The passing grade is literally just ‘Can you send an email with words that make any sense at all?’. It’s a low bar.”
In another post, Musk claimed that the email was merely to see ‘who had a pulse and two working neurons’.
Cuts have been made to many government agencies by DOGE, which is purported to be an outside advisor to the president, with no actual decision-making authority.
A Trump admin stated that 80,000 members of staff at Veterans Affairs will be cut from their roles after the agency has already fired 1,000 employees.
Workers at the Internal Revenue Service are also facing the chop, with plans to cut the number of staff in face.
Under the advice of DOGE, this will mean that 90,000 employees at the agency could lose their jobs.
Other government agencies have also been a target of Musk’s determination to cut costs.
The Forest Service is losing 3,000 staff members and another 5,000 people have been terminated from their jobs in national parks, forests and other federal public land.