The first of hundreds of experts at the USDA who are losing their jobs rather than rapidly relocating from Washington D.C. to Kansas City were set to begin receiving termination notices Wednesday.
Economists, researchers and other employees at the two agencies affected by the relocation, the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), first heard last August that USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue was exploring a move.
A Tuesday email from the USDA obtained by TPM set Aug. 7 as the date the notices would begin going out to USDA employees.
“You declined the offer of relocation with the understanding that you would be separated,” read a draft of the termination notice also obtained by TPM.
In June, Perdue announced Kansas City as the selected relocation site. Employees were given a month to tell the USDA whether they wanted to move or be fired. The relocation will be finalized at the end of September, when all affected employees are expected to report to Kansas City.
As TPM reported Tuesday, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney revealed a previously unspoken motivation for the move in a speech over the weekend: thinning the herd.
[Mulvaney Admits To Ulterior Motive For Suspicious Move Of USDA Experts]
“It’s nearly impossible to fire a federal worker,” he told the crowd at a Republican fundraising gala in South Carolina. “But by simply saying to people, you know what, we’re going to take you outside the bubble, outside the beltway, outside this liberal haven of Washington, D.C. and move you out into the real part of the country, they quit.”
“What a wonderful way to streamline government, and do what we haven’t been able to do for a long time,” Mulvaney quipped.
Initial bipartisan concern about the relocation — both over the massive brain drain it would cause and the removal of key congressional information sources from the capital — eventually melted away as Republicans sided with the Trump administration.
For many employees, especially more experienced USDA staffers with roots and families in the D.C. area, or those with medical conditions that precluded switching doctors, moving wasn’t an option.
Read the draft termination letter below:
I can’t think of a single reason that any affected employee should sign this letter and all of them should appeal to one agency or the other.
Again… try these crap in France or Korea and you get a major riot. But Americans are polite.
I hear they’re thinking about moving the office of WH Chief of Staff to North Dakota.
You good with that, Mick?
One can only hope that an overwhelming majority of voters in the country issue a notice of firing every bit as abrupt as this one to Trump and all his crowd in the White House in 2020. It will take years to repair the damage they have done—if it is repairable.
As we all know, there’s a bind here - sign it and lose all chance to challenge; don’t sign it and lose the benefits.
A class action suit might be applicable here. These folks are represented, I think, by one union or another (or maybe not, because they are white-collar??? AFSCME, maybe???). Some one somewhere should be stepping up to defend against this.