Roughly 170 probationary employees fired by EPA over nine months ago have been asked to report back to duty next month.
Those staffers, who have been on administrative leave much of this year, received an email from EPA telling them to return to work on Dec. 8. It is a stunning reversal by the agency after it terminated hundreds of employees early in the Trump administration, a move that rocked the workforce and was later ruled outside the law.
Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, EPA’s largest union, said the mass firing of probationary employees “was illegal, unfair, and scurrilous.”
“They should never had been put through this process in the first place for the crime of being civil servants protecting the environment and public health,” Chen said.
