Workers describe the gloomy environment within federal agencies

The executive orders of President Donald Trump aimed at the Federal Labor Force have injected a new wave of anxiety among employees throughout the bureaucracy, fanning the fears that the president comes to claim his jobs.

Only a few days after the second term of Trump, some federal workers are contemplating to resign. Others are preparing to present complaints to their unions or transfer communications between them to safe platforms such as Signal. Some, for fear of being trapped in the purge of diversity programs of the White House, are omitting their names of the memoranda and documents that fear that they can be labeled as adjacent to Dei.

While federal employees sought this week within the orders to see how they would be affected, a member of the Environmental Protection Agency personnel said they were cleaning their entrance tray and waiting for information on early retirement and total purchase programs.

“Trump’s version 1.0 was bad,” said the EPA employee. “I already ended with version 2.0.”

Trump, a few hours after returning to power, issued a series of executive orders that sought to reform the way in which the federal government operates, from eliminating labor protections until ending remote work and implementing a freezing of contracting. The reception within the federal government has been uncomfortable. But what worried some employees most was the decision of the White House of Tuesday to eliminate decision Diversity programs, which subsequently placed those administrative license employees.

In the State Department, the closure of these programs was something that many saw coming. But some were surprised by the directive that reports individual cases of changes in the work descriptions of the people to “disguise” the element ofi to a special email address of the Personnel Management Office. Some saw him as an order to give his colleagues. Others, who prepared for Trump’s return to power, had begun working months ago with non -profit organizations to archive websites that feared they were eliminated by the Trump administration, including information on how to end the violence of gender worldwide.

“I would love to leave, but I don’t know where I would go and I will terrorize I can’t pay rent and not have medical attention,” said a state employee.

Political spoke with almost two dozen federal workers for this article and granted anonymity to many to protect them from reprisals to speak.

It is too early to say if there will be a massive exodus of federal workers. The vagueness of the president’s orders has many workers waiting to see how they will be implemented once the political personnel are in place. But what is clear is that the new administration intends to fulfill its threats to purge and dismantle the federal bureaucracy.

“Most of us are observing cautiously and letting dust calm down,” said an employee of the United States Agency for International Development. “We know that there is a variety of possible results and some people are panic, but most are adopting an approach to wait and see.”

To increase the anguish of federal workers, the interim chief of the Office of Personnel Management, which is actually the Federal Government Human Resources Department, in Monday instructed the agencies Compile ready for the end of the week of all recent hiring and “quickly determine if those employees must be held in the agency.”

The career employees who have been at work for less than a year are in a state of trial, which means that they can be dismissed without activating the protections of the civil service that isolate much of the Federal Work Force.

“The only reason I would do that is because you are going to say goodbye to everyone,” said Alan Lescht, a Washington -based labor lawyer who represents federal workers. “If you have these mass layoffs you cannot accuse him of discriminating or anything like that. But then the question is who hires again (to Trump).

Lescht said his company began to receive an increase in the calls of federal employees worried from Monday night after Trump began signing executive orders.

The new employees who have not started are also seeing how their jobs disappear. The employees whose start date was on February 8 or later their job offers were revoked with limited exceptions. Under a different OPM note linked to the freezing of federal contracting of the Trump administration.

In NASA, in the weeks prior to Trump’s possession, union affiliation shot himself as part of an effort to protect himself as public officials. The US Government Employee Federation, which represents more than 800,000 employees from the entire government, “will be following how the agencies implement orders and will be prepared to file complaints if our contracts are violated,” said a spokesman.

A member of the Environmental Protection staff said they plan to file a complaint with the union if their remote work agreement is terminated. Meanwhile, they are preparing to find a job outside the government.

Another EPA employee predicted that important changes would not be produced until March, when the bill of short -term expenses expires. “After that, it’s a matter of luck,” they said.

Carmen Paun, Katherine Hapgood, Alfred NG and Marcia Brown contributed to this report.