‘It didn’t have to be this way’: Fired HUD probationary employees denied back pay
A probationary worker at the Department of Housing and Urban Development tells WTOP that the agency’s decision to deny back pay to reinstated workers is making what has been a tough situation even tougher.
Speaking to WTOP on the condition that her name not be used, she recalled getting the news that she was being fired last month as demoralizing.
“Even when you see the evidence that there’s tens of thousands of people being fired, it still hurts to see that,” she said. “In my case, I had nothing but positive reviews, five out of five, in the short time that I worked there.”
The fired HUD worker described a sort of “whipsaw effect” from a series of emails.
“We received an email from HUD last week, letting us know they were going to take us back and reinstate us,” she said, and that they would be on administrative leave temporarily and should cancel all unemployment claims. In that same email, she said, employees were told they would get back pay and benefits.
But then, last week, the former HUD staffer said, “We got another email from HUD that they were no longer going to comply with the court order” from a judge requiring the back pay.
“And it was up to us to ensure that we were covered with health care. So I’ve been without health insurance for about a week now,” she added.
WTOP’s news partner Federal News Network has reported on HUD’s decision to deny back pay to probationary employees, and that the March 25 email “did not provide a date employees would be taken off administrative leave and officially return to their jobs.”
The former HUD employee explained that she would be eligible for the Temporary Continuation of Coverage plan, but that would come at a cost of $2,400 a month.
“It’s quite impossible, we just lost more than half of our family’s income,” she said. “I’m the one who held all of our health insurance, because my husband is a small-business owner,” and doesn’t have benefits.
Adding to her frustration, when she checked on the status of her unemployment claim in D.C., she said she was told that she has not been approved “and they said it’s because the federal government isn’t complying. They’re not confirming that we were let go for non-performance-based reasons, and employees who are fired for performance reasons do not qualify for unemployment insurance in the District of Columbia.”
She became teary as she explained that between losing her income, going without unemployment pay and facing the loss of health care benefits for a young family has been tough.
“All it takes is one month of not getting a paycheck for your family to really struggle and to really lose access to health care,” she said with a sob. “It’s just really hard.”
She also said that like others who have been fired under President Donald Trump’s administration’s plans to slash government spending, she has been looking for work.
“I’ve applied for over 200 jobs and I’ve only had one interview in the past six weeks,” she said.
Having worked in the private sector for over a decade prior to joining the federal government as a probationary employee, she said, “It just made me regret so much my decision to join the federal government.”
“Government is supposed to protect people. Not be there trying to hurt people, and it feels like we are being hurt,” she said, becoming teary again. The scale of the firings, and what appeared to be a lack of coordination, she said, made it feel like “we’re creating this little destruction of our economy right now, and it didn’t have to be this way, you know?”
WTOP has reached out to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for a response, and received an email that read in part, “We are in receipt of your request, and it is currently under review. We will respond back to you.”