- Senior employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been asked to rank probationary employees based on how critical they are to the agencies, according to multiple reports. The task comes in tandem with the White House reportedly working on an executive order to eliminate thousands of HHS jobs, which it denies.
Amid seismic shifts in the federal workforce, senior employees at the Department of Health and Human Services are reportedly being asked to rank thousands of employees on their importance to agency operations.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leaders were told to separate probationary employees into three categories based on whether or not they were critical to the agency, an anonymous source told Bloomberg. The HHS, of which the CDC is a part, has been asked to do the same, according to internal memos and eight anonymous individuals, the Washington Post reported. Rankings for the CDC employees were due Thursday morning.
Senior leaders were asked to sort 10% of all probationary employees into “critical” roles and 50% into important or support roles. The other 40% were put into a “non-critical” category, the sources said. While many of the probationary employees in question are new, according to the sources, others have probationary status because they recently switched roles within the agency. At least 2,800 CDC employees may have their jobs at risk, per Bloomberg’s report.
Probationary roles, usually for new employees or workers with new roles, are high-risk positions as they don’t have the same benefits to appeal termination and can be let go without notice. Long-term employees must be given a 30-day notice and reason, such as misconduct, for their firing, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s employee rights and appeals.
The directive to rank employees comes amid a Wall Street Journal report, citing anonymous sources, saying the White House is working on an executive order to fire thousands of HHS employees. In addition to impacting the CDC, the sacking would affect workers at the Food and Drug Administration. HHS employs about 80,000 people.
“It’s heartbreaking, it’s disgusting, it makes me want to quit,” one employee who works for the HHS told Fortune’s Sara Braun earlier this week. “But I will not be bullied out because I recognize that my work matters, and I’m scared at how the government is being dismantled.”
Spokespeople for the CDC and HHS did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment. The White House denied the WSJ’s report saying an executive order regarding HHS terminations was in the pipeline and reports that CDC and HHS leaders were asked to rank employees.
"I’m scared at how the government is being dismantled"
The mass culling of government employees has been at the nucleus of President Donald Trump’s plan to strip and revamp the government’s structure in his first month in office. The Trump administration plans to eliminate all but 300 jobs in the U.S. Agency for International Development, leaving the majority of the agency’s 10,000 global workers without a job.
Last month, the Office of Personnel Management, under the control of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), offered financial incentives to about 2 million federal employees in exchange for their resignations. More than 50,000 employees have chosen to take the buyouts, according to the White House, but a federal judge has blocked their implementation until at least next week in order to hear arguments from unionized federal workers calling the initiative illegal.
Meanwhile, the government has apparently shifted its strategy to target low-performing federal employees. In a memo released Thursday, OPM acting director Charles Ezell asked agencies to identify “all employees who received less than a ‘fully successful’ performance rating in the past three years” by March 7.
“The agency has the ability to swiftly terminate poor performing employees who cannot or will not improve,” the memo said.
At the center of the chaos of buyouts and firings, some employees have become adamant in their decision to stay in their government-sector jobs.
“I’m not going to be chased out,” one anonymous HHS worker said. “I think my anger is what’s fueling me. I mean, sure I could get a job elsewhere, but it’s gonna cause such a disruption to my life, people I love, that I’m not willing to do that because the government is bullying me.”
