The mass firing of federal workers has affected thousands across the country and western New York was no exception. Richard Syracuse, Jeff Plummer, and another person who wished to stay unanimous, were all former probationary Internal Revenue Service employees who were fired this week after going through what they recalled as a chaotic experience.
“People are crying. People are, you know, talking about how hard it's going to be. They're not able to pay rent. You know, some people just bought a house. The office became very chaotic. Managers around 9:00 am started running around.”
“Around 11:00 am there was nothing. More hours passed. It wasn't until 2:30 pm when, after all of our equipment had been inventoried and everything that we were finally told it looks like the email is not coming. There's an issue with it. You'll receive something in the mail. And then we handed in our equipment and our IDs, and we were escorted out of the building,” said Plummer
The President claims the federal firings are performance based and for a lazy work ethic. However, these former employees say that was not the case.
“I have all my evaluations saved and there are literally no marks. I've gotten 100% said everything, except for one 99%. There's nothing about our firing that was performance based. And again, since I don't have my notice, I don't know,” said Syracuse
“It's a job that I really love. I came to love what I do. We are actually working hard. We're not lazy people. We go to work every day. We're working from 8am to 4:30pm when we leave the office. We're hard workers. I've never seen anybody slack in or playing games or idling off.”
A federal judge has ruled the Trump administration can, for now, continue with the mass firing of federal employees. The judge claiming, they have no jurisdiction over the matter. Instead, ruling unions have to bring the challenge before the Federal Labor Relations Authority which adjudicates labor relations with the federal bureaucracy, rather than a district court.
