Trump administration rehires laid-off employees after cost-cutting blitz

In response to Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz, hundreds of federal employees in the US are being asked to resign from their jobs.

According to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press news agency, the General Services Administration (GSA) has given the government employees until the end of the week to accept or reject reinstatement.

Those who accept are required to return to duty on October 6 following a seven-month paid vacation, during which time the GSA may have incurred high costs to stay in dozens of properties where their leases were scheduled to expire or were permitted to remain.

Former GSA real estate official Chad Becker said, “Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed.”

They “didn’t have the people they needed to perform basic tasks.”

The GSA has been in “triage mode,” according to Becker, who represents owners with government leases at Arco Real Estate Solutions.

He claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Musk’s previous leadership had gone too far, too quickly, as a result of the sudden downsizing.

In order to centralize the acquisition and management of thousands of federal workplaces, the GSA was established in the 1940s.

Its request for a return to work echoes DOGE’s efforts to rehire employees from various organizations.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced last month that some employees who accepted resignation offers could continue working.

The National Park Service earlier reinstated a number of purged employees, while the Labor Department has also reinstated some employees who took buyouts.

The GSA, which oversees many of the buildings, is essential to the work of these organizations.

Taus of GSA employees left the organization as part of initiatives that promoted their resignations or early retirements starting in March.

As part of a concerted effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce, hundreds of others were fired as a result of the recall notice. Some of those workers still receive pay despite missing their duties.

The agency issued on Friday, responding to inquiries into the return-to-work notice in detail, but GSA representatives did not respond.

Additionally, they objected to discussing the agency’s staffing decisions, potential cost overruns caused by changing its intentions to end leases.

A spokesman for the agency said in an email that “GSA’s leadership team has reviewed workforce actions and is making adjustments in the best interests of the American taxpayers and the customer agencies we serve.”

Democrats have criticised President Donald Trump’s administration’s arbitrary policy of cutting costs and jobs.

The top Democrat on the GSA subcommittee, which represents Arizona, Greg Stanton, told the AP that there is no proof that the agency’s reductions “delivered any savings.”

He claimed that it has caused a lot of confusion while undermining the services that taxpayers rely on.

The agency, which had about 12, 000 employees at the start of the Trump administration, was designated as a a a major target of its campaign  to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government.

A small group of Musk’s trusted advisors worked in the GSA’s headquarters, occasionally lying on cots on the sixth floor, and pursued plans to abruptly revoke nearly half the federal portfolio’s 7,500 leases.

In order to generate billions in savings, DOGE also demanded that the GSA sell hundreds of federally owned buildings.

In many cases, the GSA began by mailing landlords more than 800 lease cancellation notices without first forming the government tenants. Additionally, the organization released a list of the tens of government buildings for sale.

According to senior GAO official David Marroni, an independent watchdog, the Government Accountability Office is looking into the GSA’s management of its workforce, lease terminations, and planned building disposals. It anticipates publishing findings in the coming months.

Source: Aljazeera