President Donald Trump's administration says it is moving to reinstate more than 24,000 probationary workers it fired as part of its efforts to slash the size of the federal workforce, court documents filed Monday show.
Officials at 18 departments and agencies submitted signed declarations detailing their teams' efforts to rehire the fired workers in order to comply with court orders. Last week two federal judges ordered the administration to temporarily reinstate thousands of probationary workers who were fired.
The documents are the first full accounting of how many people lost their jobs in the Trump administration's mass firings of probationary workers, who have typically held their positions for less than two years and don't have full civil service protections.
But many of the employees being reinstated won't be getting right back to work; instead, they'll be placed on administrative leave, including at the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, two agencies that have been targeted for dismantling, and a number of other major federal departments.
Several of the officials said in the filings that reinstating employees to "full duty status would impose substantial burdens" on their departments or agencies, noting that the employees would need to be onboarded again, complete training and paperwork and receive applicable security clearances and government equipment.
Officials also said that while their departments and agencies were working to reinstate probationary employees, "an appellate ruling could reverse the district court’s order shortly after terminated employees have been reinstated."
"In short, employees could be subjected to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks," the officials said.
Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander, a Federal Aviation Administration probationary employee who was fired last month in the widespread cuts, was reinstated Tuesday, according to an email shared with NBC News.
The email said the Transportation Department was "rescinding" his initial termination to be “in compliance" with the order from U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Maryland last week. Spitzer-Stadtlander will receive backpay as well, the email said.
The court filings on Tuesday said fired probationary workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been put on administrative leave, but three CDC workers told NBC News on Monday evening that they had not yet been reinstated.
“I want my job back," said Sarah Boim, a former communications specialist at the agency, in an MSNBC interview. "I felt like I was really making a difference for the American people. I do understand that it is an environment of chaos right now, so I think it would be difficult, but I do believe in the good work that we were doing, and I would like to continue doing it.”
When reached again on Tuesday, the three workers said they had not received any notice related to paid administrative leave. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Separately, in the second of the two cases dealing with the reinstatement of the workers, U.S. District Judge William Alsup took issue with putting those who are rehired on administrative leave, telling the government's lawyers Monday night that doing so "would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore."
"The Court has read news reports that, in at least one agency, probationary employees are being rehired but then placed on administrative leave en masse," Alsup said in a filing. "This is not allowed by the preliminary injunction, for it would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore."
Alsup, who serves the Northern District of California, asked that the government "state the extent to which any rehired probationary employees are being placed on administrative leave" by Tuesday at noon.
The federal government moved last month to fire probationary employees after agency leaders were advised by the Office of Personnel Management to dismiss the workers, NBC News previously reported.
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