AFGE rally on mass firings of federal employees in Washington, DC on February 11, 2025. Employees - including some 1,000 at the VA - have received separation notices that rather than citing performance issues, make vague statements that their employment is not in the public interest. Image: Nathan Posner/Shutterstock
By: FEDweek StaffFederal agencies have begun widespread layoffs of employees in their probationary periods ordered by the Trump administration, although without formal guidance so far, there has been substantial confusion and the potential for significant differences among agencies.
Layoffs of probationary employees have been expected since OPM in the early days of the administration asked agencies for lists of their employees in that status—when they can be fired without full appeal rights to the MSPB—and for a determination of “whether those employees should be retained at the agency.”
Some layoffs had started earlier in the week but they picked up in recent days after the Tuesday evening closure of the “deferred resignation” window. There has been no government-wide accounting so far, however.
The probationary period typically is one year in the competitive service and two years in the excepted service, although there are exceptions. The government averages around 200,000 employees in that status at any given time out of the 2.3 million total; as of the most recent OPM data from last May, the number was 216,000.
Also, in view of the lack of formal guidance, questions remain regarding possible exclusions. The deferred resignation program for example allowed agencies to exclude from eligibility employees involved with immigration enforcement, national security or public safety, plus potentially others. The general hiring freeze provides for similar exceptions and further allowed hiring to maintain service levels for providing Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits.
One of the few agencies that has made a public announcement is the VA, which said it has laid off about 1,000, all non-bargaining unit employees, out of a total of more than 43,000 in probationary status. The rest “are exempt from today’s personnel actions because they serve in mission-critical positions – primarily those supporting benefits and services for VA beneficiaries – or are covered under a collective bargaining agreement,” it said.
The VA added that it exempted from the layoffs employees who had agreed to the deferred resignation offer, which promised continued pay and benefits for as long as through September 30 for resignation by the deadline.
The limited appeal rights in probationary periods are part of what is considered a job tryout period in which agencies can act quickly to remove employees not performing up to expectations. However, employees who have received separation notices–often delivered by email–say they do not cite performance issues but rather cite vague grounds such as that their employment is no longer in the public interest. In many cases the employees were told to stop work immediately.
Said the AFGE union, “This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office . . AFGE will fight these firings every step of the way. We will stand with every impacted employee, pursue every legal challenge available, and hold this administration accountable for its reckless actions. Federal employees are not disposable, and we will not allow the government to treat them as such.”
A lawsuit filed in recent days by a group of federal unions contends that the executive order calling on agencies to prepare for wide-scale reductions in force violates policies on the allowable reasons for invoking RIFs as well as the required procedures for conducting them. Among other things, it asserts that layoffs must be conducted within defined organizational and geographic areas, not by job status such as probationary vs. tenured.
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