At least 600 employees at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention are expected to receive layoff notices this week as the administration seeks to downsize the agency – just weeks after its headquarters became the target of a deadly shooting.
Some workers in the U.S. public health agency began receiving notices this week of final terminations, but others have not, making it difficult to determine how many people are being let go, the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing hundreds of thousands of government employees, said.
The agency cuts are occurring roughly a week after a federal judge ruled that hundreds of CDC employees could be laid off, with some exceptions.
The cuts also come just as CDC employees are returning to its headquarters in Georgia after a gunman fired 180 shots at the building, causing dozens of windows to shatter and leaving bullet holes scattered across the building.
Employees who returned to the office this week after the traumatic shooting shared photos with NOTUS that showed windows still damaged by bullet holes and handwritten signs taped to chairs warning people of glass on the carpet.
While no CDC employees were killed in the shooting, the gunman, reportedly disgruntled about the Covid-19 vaccine, fatally shot one police officer.
Some of those employees being laid off include those in the CDC’s violence prevention division, who, in an open letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., called the cuts “harmful” and “negligent.”
“Cutting this work now, especially after the horrific and tragic shooting that killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose and trapped our children in the on-site daycare center into the night while targeting federal employees, is not just harmful — it is negligent,” the 150 employees said.
In a separate letter, hundreds of other CDC and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry employees scolded Kennedy for spreading health misinformation – the same kind that may have led the gunman to blame the Covid-19 vaccine for mental health issues.
“When the federal workforce is not safe, America is not safe,” the employees wrote. “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.”
Kennedy has a long history of spreading false information about vaccines, bolstering pseudosciences, and downplaying the seriousness of diseases such as measles or HIV/AIDS.
The agency has pushed back against the criticism of Kennedy from staff, however.
“Secretary Kennedy is standing firmly with CDC employees — both on the ground and across every center — ensuring their safety and well-being remain a top priority,” HHS said in a statement to the Washington Post. “Any attempt to conflate widely supported public health reforms with the violence of a suicidal mass shooter is an attempt to politicize a tragedy.”
A CDC official told The Independent that the layoffs were consistent with downsizing efforts which were first announced in March.
Some CDC employees told NOTUS that morale was low upon returning to the office recently, due to the impending layoffs and leadership’s stance toward their lifesaving medical research and development.
“We trudge on because we believe in what we do, and we feel a sense of responsibility to the American people, and for some of us, to those beyond the U.S.,” the CDC employees said.
