A flag-bearing honor guard stands silhouetted against Air Force One after it landed on Sept. 11, 2023, at Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson. Then-President Joe Biden flew from Asia to the Anchorage base for a memorial ceremony commemorating the 9/11 terrorism attacks. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
A federal workers union expects a total of at least 1,378 federal employees in Alaska with probationary status to be fired by the Trump administration.
David Owens, a national representative with the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union did not have current numbers of those already fired as of Thursday, but expects the Trump administration to fire all probationary employees. Out of the 1,378 employees, 331 are veterans, he said.
He cited an Office of Personnel Management database in giving the following breakdown for Alaska: The Air Force has 294 employees, Army has 191; the Department of Homeland Security has 31; the Department of Transportation has 109; the Department of Interior, including park employees and firefighters, has 296; and the Department of Agriculture has 138. That list includes workers represented by the AFGE; other probationary employees are not represented by the union.
Probationary employees include those who are new to federal employment, as well as some experienced workers who have changed jobs. The probationary period lasts one or two years, with many veterans having two-year probationary periods.
Owens said his office is getting calls from members with termination letters incorrectly citing poor performance, and that is used to fire employees who have no recourse. “They get emails that your performance is substandard, which is not true, and this is nothing other than they’re just attacking the probationary employees because they don’t have any appeal rights … and they don’t have title protections, which would give them a right to fight this,” he said, referring to Title VII protections under the Civil Rights Act, which bar discrimination in employment, including firing.
He said there is no official tally of fired employees in Alaska to date. “I don’t have the numbers that have actually been removed. The only people who know that are the administration or the agencies, and I guarantee you’re not going to get the agency to tell you. All I can go by is the data I have, which is the number of federal employees,” he said.
There’s 200,000 federal employees with probationary status nationwide. “And they’re targeting, honestly, every last one of them,” he said.
“We have no way of knowing how many they’re going to cut, if they’re going to cut everybody, because we have no rhyme or reason with this. There seems to be no strategy behind this at all other than just cut, cut, cut,” he said. “And they cut every last federal employee that’s probationary, it would only save them about 1% of the budget, if they cut 200,000 (people).”
Alaska has 11,717 federal employees statewide, according to the Office of Personnel Management, as of Aug. 2024.
Owens said AFGE represents Alaska employees with the Department of Veterans Affairs; Social Security Administration; Department of Homeland Security, including the Transportation Security Administration; Navy; Coast Guard in Juneau and Kodiak; Army, at Fort Greely and Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks North Star Borough; and Air Force, on Eielson Air Force Base and the Clear Space Force Station in the Interior, as well as Air Force and Army at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.
He said with all those probationary status employees eliminated, making an estimated $70,000 per year, the loss in federal salaries would total $97 million.
“It’s been a nightmare,” he said. “I’ve had people call me all day long. I’ve had people call me last week with, ‘I’ve been working good.’ ‘I got a performance award.’ ‘I had no problem with my job.’ ‘What am I going to do?’”
He said AFGE is currently coordinating with other unions nationwide to file a class action lawsuit.
“What I tell the people I’m representing is, we’re doing a class action lawsuit. We feel this is not justified. They can’t say, ‘We’re going to get rid of these employees because of performance,’ when most of them are getting superior performance” reviews, he said. “And they’re basically very afraid, because, ‘I don’t have a job. Without a job, I can’t pay my mortgage. What am I going to do?’ A lot of them are telling me they’re going to be leaving the state.”
He said U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski so far has been supportive of the union and fired workers. This week Murkowski condemned the Trump administration’s federal firings in a tele-town hall, “This is not how we treat any of our workforce. It’s not how we treat our federal employees. They deserve better,” she said.
Alaska State Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage, on Thursday expressed concerns about the impacts of firing Federal Highway Administration employees on Alaska’s transportation projects. “That puts at risk an additional tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in construction work,” he said, adding that the state lost access to millions of dollars in federal transportation funding last year and this year due to state errors. “We are going to enter the worst construction season in memory, probably in my lifetime.”
Fields said those federal firings would have a ripple effect on the construction industry.
“So if Trump is then laying off the federal employees who are necessary to implement these funds, that is going to exacerbate an already dire situation for the construction industry,” he said. “And from what I’ve heard from contractors, they’re looking at losing 1,200 to 1,800 workers this year, in Alaska, and Trump’s actions are making it worse.”
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