Labor & Employment
Fired Department of Education staff invited back to work
Staff at the U.S. Department of Education, who were targeted for termination in March, this week received emails calling them back to work because of a backlog of cases.
Staff at the U.S. Department of Education, who were targeted for termination in March, this week received emails calling them back to work because of a backlog of cases.
The group included many attorneys who handle school discrimination complaints with the department’s Office for Civil Rights, NPR reports.
An email shared with NPR instructs them to report to work Monday, Dec. 15.
A purported case pileup, some of which involves students with disabilities, may be why employees were called back to work.
“Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the department’s own making,” Rachel Gittleman, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Local 252 chapter, which represents many Education Department employees, told NPR.
Court records indicate that 52 OCR employees have left the department.
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