In his first days in workplace, President Donald Trump signed government orders that despatched many federal workers reeling: looming layoffs, a freeze on federal hiring and and new back-to-office expectations for a lot of distant employees. On Wednesday, he introduced that workers in variety, fairness and inclusion roles can be placed on paid depart.
He’s vowed to do rather more, tapping Tesla CEO Elon Musk to run a brand new Division of Authorities Effectivity.
Whereas the White Home sits greater than 2,000 miles from the Golden State, the commander-in-chief’s actions stand to have an effect on loads of Californians. About 250,000 federal employees stay in California, together with tens of hundreds within the Bay Space.
Solely Virginia and the District of Columbia had extra civilian federal employees than California final 12 months, in accordance with information from the U.S. Workplace of Personnel Administration, intently adopted by Maryland.
“It’s the great unknown,” stated Bobbie Scopa, a retired firefighter and former chief with a long time of expertise within the U.S. Forest Service. She now advocates for federal firefighters. Whereas previous hiring freezes haven’t affected the fireplace providers immediately, “everything seems to be a little bit different this time,” she stated.
The federal authorities is likely one of the largest employers within the nation, with simply over 3 million workers. They work for federal companies such because the Forest Service, NASA, FEMA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Postal Service.
An estimated 38,000 federal employees stay in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, in accordance with information from California’s Employment Improvement Division.
“This is all kind of a PR game right now,” stated Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Protection and present chairman of the Panetta Institute for Public Coverage, primarily based at CSU Monterey Bay. Trump “can make it uncomfortable for federal employees, but I don’t think he can take a lot of the steps that he’s threatening to take.”
Panetta, additionally former director of the Central Intelligence Company, described Trump’s transfer as “campaign hoopla… to convince the American people that he’s getting things done.”
Trump has usually vowed to chop federal spending and eradicate some companies totally, however he made lots of the similar guarantees earlier than his first time period as president, and the federal workforce really grew from 2.81 to 2.88 million workers throughout his time period.
“Reagan came in and said he was going to get rid of the Department of Education and a bunch of other things, and ultimately was unable to do it,” Panetta stated, referring to former Republican President Ronald Reagan. He stated the identical factor might occur with Trump’s new guarantees.
Already controversy is swirling round Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity, dubbed DOGE.
The fee, which formally joined the federal government inside the Govt Workplace of the President, has been tasked with discovering methods to scale back the federal price range, although Congress would get the ultimate say. Inside hours of the brand new administration taking workplace, unions and authorities watchdog teams had sued over the fee, asserting there should be public enter and transparency to adjust to the regulation.
“If you really want to focus on efficiency in government, if you really want to focus on reducing the debt and trying to implement fiscal order, there are better ways to try to accomplish those goals,” Panetta stated, including that actual change on the federal stage takes time and cooperation.
The concern, and the truth, of a Musk-induced termination is acquainted for hundreds of Bay Space residents, together with round 6,000 former workers of Twitter, which Musk acquired and become X. Some whom are suing Musk over their abrupt terminations.
The Division of Veterans Affairs is the federal authorities’s largest employer company, with simply over 21% of the workforce, adopted by the Navy and the Military, which make use of about 10% every.
Since 1999, the variety of federal employees has remained considerably steady at round 2.8 million folks, till 2019 when it began to develop, reaching over 3 million in 2024 for the primary time since 1993, exterior of the census workers hiring that occurs each 10 years.
“There is no legitimate rationale for slashing the size of the federal workforce. The number of federal workers has grown by roughly 6% over the past 50 years, while the U.S. population served by the federal government has increased by 57%,” stated Everett Kelley, nationwide president of the American Federation of Authorities Workers, a union that represents a whole lot of hundreds of federal employees, and is likely one of the teams suing the administration over DOGE.
Whereas uncertainty swirls, Scopa stated the brand new administration might current a possibility to make the federal hearth providers extra environment friendly, however says a hiring freeze would put them in a bind, with many essential senior positions unfilled as fires proceed to eat giant swaths of California. Even absent a hiring freeze, Scopa worries all of the discuss of slashing the federal workforce might deter would-be candidates.
“With everything going on and all the threats against federal employees,” she stated, “why would [someone] want to take a chance and go to work for the feds?”
Initially Printed: January 22, 2025 at 5:11 PM PST
