A judge has ordered president Donald Trump to re-hire thousands of employees that he and Elon Musk fired for ‘poor performance’.
Californian federal judge William H Alsup has found that at least 30k employees who were in their probationary period at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Treasury and the Department of the Interior were fired by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for ‘poor performance’.
DOGE is coordinated by Elon Musk and Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Their aim to streamline the US government by getting rid of thousands of jobs and reducing the wage bill.
Trump shared that their goal is to ‘dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies’.
Now, in court on March 13, Alsup said: “It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie.”
Many employees who lost their jobs found out that the reason was due to ‘poor performance’ despite receiving positive feedback beforehand.
This is not the first time the judge has passed a ruling on the subject. Back in February, he claimed the firing was illegal because the Office of Personnel Management didn’t have the authority.
After, the OPM amended a January 20 memo on rules of probationary employees.
The American Federation of Government Employees then claimed that this was an admission of acting illegally.
The union issued a statement earlier in the month which stated: “OPM’s revision of its Jan 20 memo is a clear admission that it unlawfully directed federal agencies to carry out mass terminations of probationary employees – which aligns with Judge Alsup’s recent decision in our lawsuit challenging these illegal firings.
“Every agency should immediately rescind these unlawful terminations and reinstate everyone who was illegally fired.”
