Experienced workers, not just rookies, get cut as Trump slashes probationary employees

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Warren Hill spent more than two decades working at the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, which spans 4 million acres of coastline, forests, lakes and glaciers in Alaska.

Last summer, he was promoted to serve as maintenance supervisor, in addition to his roles as carpenter and mechanic. But because Hill was starting a new role, he was on probationary status when President Donald Trump ’s administration began firing thousands and thousands of federal workers who had less civil service protection.

“I'm furious," he said. “I am just a few years away from retirement, not to mention all my benefits disappeared in a flash.”

Probationary employees are generally younger, with less than a year or two on the job. However, the classification can also apply to workers with much more experience who were placed on probation when they transferred between agencies or moved into a different position. Now many have been swept up in layoffs championed by Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who is advising Trump.

A lot of them, including Hill, were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were often terminated in cursory letters that described their services as no longer needed or accused them of poor performance even in cases where they had received positive reviews for their work.

“They have no idea how many lives they are destroying and the negative economic impact they are having in our community and all the others like ours,” Hill said.

The total number and experience level of probationary employees who have been fired isn't clear. The layoffs have taken place across many agencies, including Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Education, Energy, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Park Service. Roughly 2,000 employees were cut from the U.S. Forest Service, and another 7,000 people are expected to be let go at the Internal Revenue Service.

Unions for federal workers filed a lawsuit Thursday to stop and reverse the layoffs, accusing the administration of the “indiscriminate firing of thousands of patriotic public servants across the country.”

The Trump administration has defended its handling of probationary employees, which is part of a sweeping effort to downsize the federal government.

“The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment,” said McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, brushed off concerns about employees being falsely accused of lackluster work.

“I’ve never seen a person who was laid off for poor performance say that they were performing poorly,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Trump's allies have long considered civil service protections to be an impediment to achieving his agenda, and there's been talk about reclassifying employees to make them easier to fire. For now, administration officials have tried to push out as many as possible, either by giving them financial incentives to quit or laying off those on probationary status.

“Probationary periods are an essential tool for agencies to assess employee performance and manage staffing levels,” read a memo distributed on Inauguration Day. “Employees on probationary periods can be terminated during that period without triggering appeal rights to the Merit Systems Protection Board.”

Federal agencies were given four days to draw up lists of all probationary employees.

Some of them were working as civilians after long careers in the military.

Terri Wollenberg said she spent more than three decades in the U.S. Army and Navy before retiring and going to work at the Cedar Rapids Veterans Center in Iowa, where she remained in probationary status. She met clients at the door, confirmed schedules and assisted the center's counselors.

But last Friday, Wollenberg said her director “let me know that I was done."

“I didn’t even know I was on a list that could possibly be considered, but it appears that any one of us could be on that list," she said.

There's no one left to do her job, Wollenberg said during a press conference organized by Iowa Democrats. “We’re not here to get rich," she said. “We’re here to work for the citizens of the United States.”

Kayleigh McCarthy was among the probationary U.S. Forest Service employees fired last week, allegedly for performance issues.

She had been hired as a seasonal employee at the Anan Wildlife Observatory in Alaska, but she was upgraded to a permanent position within the last year. She monitored and recorded black and brown bear behavior in the Tongass National Forest, and sometimes she would stop tourists on hiking trails to give the animals the right of way.

“A lot of times, mama bears — especially black bears — are walking across with their cubs," McCarthy said.

McCarthy had spent her summers living on a float house and became entrenched in the community, where she met her boyfriend. Her situation began to unravel on Sunday, when her supervisor reached out.

“She had to call me and told me that I had been terminated and that it was supposedly because of performance, even though she told me that my performance had always been exemplary," McCarthy said.

“It says on the termination letter that it’s because of performance, when in fact I only have exemplary performance, and so it doesn’t seem that there’s just cause for these firings,” she said.

McCarthy plans to appeal her firing. But once she finishes her graduate degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she'll likely need to leave the state to find a new job.

“I am angry, and I am upset and I am heartbroken," she said.

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Writer Josh Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska. Megerian reported from Washington.