The United States Department of Agriculture on Tuesday announced each of the 6,000 probationary employees it had terminated since Feb. 13 now has their job back, the department said in a press release.
“By Wednesday, March 12, the Department will place all terminated probationary employees in pay status and provide each with back pay, from the date of termination,” USDA’s statement said. “The Department will work quickly to develop a phased plan for return-to-duty, and while those plans materialize, all probationary employees will be paid.”
The Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent federal court that focuses on government employee complaints, issued a stay order against the USDA on March 5. The Board ordered the reinstatement of every position terminated within the department since Feb. 13 to be reinstated for at least 45 days, on the grounds that USDA’s mass and indiscriminate termination was likely unlawful.
Wednesday, March 12, was the deadline for the USDA to submit proof it had complied with the Board’s order.
USDA’s mass firing on Feb. 13 included thousands of federal land employees, around 75% of which had secondary wildland fire duties, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters Vice President Riva Duncan, who obtained the numbers from the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Wildland Fire division.
“While ‘primary firefighters’ were exempt, the positions that were cut made some pretty huge contributions to operational wildland fire,” Duncan said. “For example, eastern national forests rely much more heavily on these collateral duty folks to do a lot of prescribed burning and initial attack of wildfires…There were people working the LA fires who, because it was the offseason, weren’t primary fire but were filling in on engines and crews.”
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