For Philly’s remaining federal employees, work evokes anxiety, guilt, resentment

When Emily logged on for work on April Fools’ Day, the unease in the atmosphere was reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a Philadelphia-area employee at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, she had seen the layoffs and restructuring taking place across her agency that morning.

“It feels like those conversations that you had in March of 2020 when it was like, ‘How are you doing in these unprecedented times?’” Emily, who is being identified only by first name because she is not authorized to speak to the media, said of the vibes among the federal workforce. “The sort of same language is kind of coming back around to us.”

Emily, a five-year employee at HHS, did not receive a reduction-in-force (RIF) notice like roughly 10,000 HHS employees across the U.S. Across departments, federal employees like Emily have watched as the government fires their coworkers, moves to strip their union rights, and restructures their agencies — all while they carry on in their day jobs.

Thousands have been affected by layoffs or taken resignation offers, spurred by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Those who remain are also grappling with President Donald Trump’s mandate that federal workers return to full-time in-office work, and weighing whether to keep their jobs amid the uncertainty and the expectation of more firings.

“They’re trying to do their work. They’re distracted by the chaos that has been created around them, and there’s fear, anxiety, sense of betrayal and concern, and being overwhelmed,” said Max Stier, founding president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan, national nonprofit that aims to improve the federal government.

Added to those feelings, Emily says, is a little bit of guilt.

“I was kept safe, when my colleagues, who have been around for like decades, were let go, but just because they were under a different umbrella [than me],” Emily said.

The remaining federal employees are bracing for — and some have already been living with — increased workloads and new procedures.

A recent hire at the HHS, who was not authorized to speak to the media and asked for anonymity, said the layoffs with no notice created uncertainty about workflow and chain of command.

“We all know, you know, the workload is going to increase, but it’s still kind of like chaos,” the HHS employee said. “People will ask, like, ‘Who is the contact for this? Who is the contact for that?’ And we just don’t know.”

At Independence National Historical Park, rangers will have to double and triple the number of tours they give because they have fewer staff, Dave Fitzpatrick, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 270, said in an interview last month.

“Your voice can only talk so long, and they’re projecting their voice, right? … They’re talking to 100 people, and [at] Independence they have to project. That takes a toll on you,” Fitzpatrick said.

The Social Security Administration office at Third and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia was already understaffed before the Trump administration took over, said Beverly Parks, who represents about 425 workers there, most of whom are claims processors.

“If you keep reducing the workforce, all you’re doing is making these people wait longer for their [Social Security] benefit,” said Parks, president of AFGE Local 2006.

She said around 10 workers in the civil rights and equal opportunity division were put on administrative leave with the expectation they would be terminated. Her members have also been taking deferred resignation and early retirement offers.

“Everyone’s on edge, thinking, ‘OK, well, is my department going to be next? Maybe I should leave now while these incentives are on the table,’” Parks said.

Amid all these changes, a new Musk-inspired task was added to federal employees’ weekly to-do lists: an audit of work they accomplished.

The Office of Personnel Management sent workers an email in February with the question: “What did you do last week?”

Every Monday, a Center City-based Environmental Protection Agency employee who works with Superfund sites sends a response. It takes time away from her other work, said the EPA employee, who spoke on the basis of anonymity out of concern for how her agency would react to her speaking to the media.

“Who am I sending this to? Are they even reading it? Is it valuable to them at all?” the EPA employee wondered. “My supervisor knows what I’m doing every week, so I don’t need to do this to do my job.”

Andrew Kreider, an environmental protection specialist at the EPA’s Region 3 office in Philadelphia, said he doesn’t find the process burdensome, but he doesn’t know what value it provides.

“I do enough work in the course of a week to provide five bullets about it,” he said. “I don’t know if anybody is reading these. I’ve never received a response, but I’m more than happy to talk about the work that I do.”

Alex Jay Berman, a union representative for Philadelphia IRS workers, has utilized the agency’s option for a compressed work schedule — four 10-hour days a week. He could schedule doctor appointments on the weekday off, and says the setup provides “greater work-life balance” for employees.

That option is now going away for IRS employees. Federal workers across agencies have also been ordered to return to the office full-time.

Parks, at the Social Security Administration, said the new in-office mandate “completely violated” the union’s agreement on telework. The transition has been “pretty chaotic,” she said, with little time to plan for transportation and parking, child care, or elder-care coverage.

“Before, you could be at home to see your child on and off of the bus. Now you have to find someone else to do that because you can’t be at home,” she said.

Kreider at the EPA, who had been in the office one or two days a week until recently, says it has been “an adjustment” dealing with the daily commute again — he was in the office five days a week earlier in his career and was accustomed to it.

“It’s not the coming to the office that’s problematic. It’s the manner in which I was directed to come to the office every single day,” said Kreider, who has been with the agency for roughly 28 years.

His union, AFGE, negotiated a contract with the EPA that protects telework for eligible employees, he noted.

“The federal government broke a contract with me, and that is what I resent,” Kreider said.

The Trump administration has also moved to end union representation for many federal workers. In early March, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was ending collective bargaining for Transportation Security Administration workers, and later that month, Trump signed an executive order to end union representation among numerous agencies.

Unions are pushing back with legal action. But the union dues that pay for lawyers are no longer being deducted from some employees’ paychecks, creating additional steps for the unions to get those funds.

Kreider had planned to retire from the EPA, but the last few months have been “incredibly stressful,” he said, and he’s “not sure that concluding my career at EPA will be possible.”

“We don’t know on any given day whether there’s going to be an announcement about a reduction in force or some other decision that could have dramatic impacts on our work lives and also the work that we do,” Kreider said April 10, noting colleagues have been placed on administrative leave.

Philip Glover, national vice president of AFGE District 3, said at an April 2 policy hearing of the Pennsylvania House majority that morale has plummeted.

“I’ve talked to so many employees that come to work, and frankly, they don’t know if they’re going to be there tomorrow,” Glover said.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has been encouraging federal employees to leave “lower productivity jobs” in the public sector in favor of “higher productivity jobs” in the private sector, and has offered workers the opportunity to voluntarily resign while continuing to receive pay for months.

From March 5 to April 2, at least 700 federal employees applied for jobs with the state of Pennsylvania, according to Glover.

The EPA employee who works with Superfund sites recently attended a networking event, even though she would like to stay at the EPA long-term.

“I would rather be a little bit prepared than completely caught off-guard,” she said. “It’s just trying to see what my options are in a worst-case scenario, and hopefully I don’t have to actually take action on those.”

Karen Ford-Woods, president of AFGE Local 1793, which represents about 1,400 Veterans Affairs employees at the Philadelphia medical center, said her members are feeling “anxious.”

“They want to know where they’re going, what their future is,” Ford-Woods said the first week of April.

The department has announced plans to cut up to 80,000 positions, according to media reports. The VA employed over 25,000 people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware last year.

“They fear that they’re not gonna have a job,” Ford-Woods said.

Brad Starnes, a union representative in Philadelphia, said in late March that he has been noticing EPA colleagues retiring around him, concerned about potential cuts to benefits, including retirement plans.

“We’re talking [about] more tenured employees who ideally should be around to mentor newer employees,” Starnes said.

The recent HHS hire, who just embarked on the public service career they had long dreamed of, is now filling out job applications, unsure whether that career has a future.

The hire was on edge when HHS workers started getting fired, but partly wished for a termination, hoping for relief from the chaos and uncertainty.

“I’m getting fed up with it, but I can’t bring myself to quit yet,” the HHS worker said, “because this was a dream job.”