An independent federal board Tuesday granted a request to halt the termination of six probationary government employees who were terminated amid the Trump administration’s effort to shrink the federal workforce.
The Merit Systems Protection Board, a body created to protect federal workers from labor abuses, agreed to a requested 45-day stay on the firings, so the U.S. Office of Special Counsel could investigate the complaints raised by workers.
The organizations that launched the complaint on behalf of the terminated employees — Democracy Forward and Alden Law Group — said they will work to extend the stay to blanket thousands of federal workers at myriad agencies who were fired earlier this month in a mass layoff of employees still within their probationary period of employment, which has generally meant people in their first year or two on the job.
“I am very grateful the MSPB has agreed to postpone these six terminations,” said Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger in a statement. “These stays represent a small sample of all the probationary employees who have been fired recently so our work is far from done.”
