Federal Workers

With no end in sight to the funding standoff, financial anxiety is growing. One single mom in Colorado raided her retirement savings to get through the shutdown.

After months of layoffs and funding cuts by the Trump administration, the government shutdown has given some federal employees hope that their voices are finally being heard.

Eight months after the Department of Government Efficiency effort to shrink the federal workforce began, some agencies are hiring workers back — and spending more money than before.

Federal workers who took the Trump administration's buyout offer come off the payroll at the end of September. Now some are confronting fear, regret and uncertainty as they figure out what's next.

A judge ruled the firing of thousands of federal employees was illegal. But he stopped short of ordering the government to reinstate them, predicting the Supreme Court would overturn it.

President Trump has ended collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal workers. Unions have sued to block the move, but agencies are terminating contracts as litigation continues.

The push to rehire retired workers comes as the administration has also sought to downsize large swaths of the federal government through mass layoffs and other changes.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed to the court by President Biden, dissented.

Commerce Department employees who were fired, reinstated, and fired again learned belatedly that their health insurance has been cut off. Some had already racked up thousands in medical bills.

In 1978, Congress gave federal workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, finding it in the public interest. Now Trump wants to end those labor rights for most of the federal workforce.