Terminated federal probationary workers in Oregon say they are in the dark about what will happen following rulings by two federal judges who ordered the Trump administration last week to reinstate fired employees from more than a dozen agencies.
The two federal judges rendered their rulings on Thursday, only hours apart from one another. U.S. District Judge James Bredar, in Maryland, ordered the Trump administration to temporarily reinstate workers from 18 agencies by 1 p.m. Monday. Bredar issued a 14-day stay in the case brought by 20 Democratic attorneys general, including Oregon’s Dan Rayfield, against the agencies.
Bredar called the firings “illegal” reductions in force because the government claimed it didn’t need to provide advance notice, citing performance issues, for example. Bredar in his ruling, however, contends that was not true because there was no individual assessment of each employee before the mass terminations.
Just hours before, a federal judge in San Francisco also ordered the Trump administration to reinstate terminated workers from six agencies. The Trump administration has appealed both rulings.
Joseph Mucklow, who was fired in February from this job at the VA Roseburg Health Care System, said his former bosses are aware of the rulings, but he has not received information about whether he’ll get his job back, or if he needs to report to work on Monday.
“No instructions for tomorrow at all,” Mucklow, a Navy veteran said on Sunday. “In order words, in the dark until tomorrow rolls around.”
Mucklow is among the terminated federal workers in Oregon who are navigating a murky and turbulent situation following their abrupt job losses. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been slashing positions as part of a plan to shrink the federal workforce.
The number of federal probationary workers in Oregon who have been terminated is not yet known, but as of last spring, Oregon had about 29,700 federal employees, and some 4,700 of them were in probationary periods last August.
As of last spring, federal workers in Oregon accounted for about 1.5% of all employees statewide.
Rayfield issued a statement last week, following the temporary restraining order from the federal judge in Maryland. He said Trump “blindsided Oregon when he fired thousands of federal probationary employees without” providing his office with a 60-day notice as required by law.
“He jeopardized these employees' financial security, threatened our state’s economy,” Rayfield said in the statement, “and risked overwhelming Oregon’s ability to help those who were out of work.”
The ruling from the federal judge in Maryland, Rayfield said, not only requires the Trump administration to stop the “indiscriminate and unlawful layoffs,” but also for the administration to restore those jobs by 1 p.m. Monday.
But as of Sunday, it was still unclear how the ruling will play out for federal probationary workers in Oregon who were terminated, and what it will mean for their lost jobs.
“We are all in the dark still,” Ali Mizell, who was terminated from her position as a survey technician for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said. “Unable to move forward.”
She said she hasn’t “heard a darn word” from her former employers.
“It’s really frustrating,” she said, adding that some workers have heard that their supervisors are awaiting guidance from the Department of Labor, but have not received information from them yet.
What she has heard, unofficially, is that workers might be reinstated but be placed on administrative leave, with pay and backpay.
Another former federal employee, who asked to remain anonymous in case she is rehired, had also heard that some workers are being reinstated on a “45-day paid administrative leave,” and that some of them began to receive back pay in their bank accounts late last week. Now, she’s unsure whether she’ll have to pay back any unemployment benefits, which took a full month for her to receive.
“This is a big chaotic, inefficient process of what is happening,” said the worker, who lost her job in February. “How is that in the best interest of the American people?”
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