How Philadelphia’s probationary federal employees are coping with mass government layoffs

Just a few weeks ago, Brandon Hayward received a $500 cash prize and a “Making a Difference Award,” for his “outstanding performance” over seven months of employment at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Philadelphia.

But when Hayward, a lead accountant, logged on for work Tuesday morning, the 46-year-old Army veteran found he was locked out of Microsoft Teams. A letter in his email inbox told him he had been terminated — for performance reasons.

Hayward is one of a growing number of federal employees in the Philadelphia area who have been fired since President Donald Trump took office. Probationary workers — individuals who are typically within the first year of their employment at an agency or within the first year of a promotion — were targeted and have said they were told their termination was a result of poor job performance, even though their supervisors hadn’t raised concerns before. And for some employees, like Hayward, their work had been celebrated.

On Thursday, a federal judge in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order on the mass layoffs of probationary employees and stated that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) had no authority to order the firings. It remains unclear how this ruling will impact employees who were already terminated.

The firings, which sprawled across federal agencies, are the work of Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has upended the federal workforce in the name of slashing government spending.

Their actions have included a recent email from OPM asking workers “What did you do last week?” Hayward was among those who responded on Monday, less than 24 hours before he was fired.

For many federal employees who have been laid off, the work is personal.

Hayward served in the Army for over 20 years, including three deployments to Iraq, one deployment to Afghanistan, and one to Haiti.

He took a job with the VA in July 2024 because he wanted to help his fellow veterans access their benefits. Now, with the support of his union and supervisors and after filing a wrongful termination complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, Hayward hopes his termination will be overturned.

“I’m gonna fight for my career,” Hayward said. “That’s what I did for the past 20 years, you know, fought for my brothers and sisters, the soldiers that I worked with.”

One probationary employee who lost their job had worked at the IRS location in King of Prussia auditing large companies for inconsistencies in their tax filings. The work can result in settlements bringing in millions of dollars to the government.

“We are bringing the revenue, so we thought that we [would] not be targeted … I mean waste, fraud, and abuse — this is what our job is, to detect the fraud in the tax returns,” said the former IRS employee, who spoke on the basis of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing future employment.

While he had only worked at the IRS for about half a year, the employee has 20 years of experience in private equity, and another 10 years in public accounting, he said. He took a 60% pay cut to work at the IRS, but he liked that the job was close to his home and the sense that he was doing something for the country. That was after a “competitive selection process” and was followed by 26 weeks of training, he said.

The IRS spent time and money bringing him in and suddenly it looks like a “sunk cost,” he said.

The temporary restraining order on the layoffs was good news, the former IRS worker said, but he still doesn’t know whether he’ll get his job back. He’d like to.

Local union leaders and federal workers have also expressed concern about government services suffering amid the recent shake-up.

One former probationary employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), who spoke anonymously to prevent potential conflicts of interest in their next job, said their firing and others could result in both short-term and long-term risks for disaster prevention, construction resiliency, and providing expertise to impacted communities.

The former FEMA worker took the job because they wanted to help smaller communities. But after only four months of employment, they received a termination notice on Presidents’ Day. The one-day off-boarding process was “cold,” they said.

But it wasn’t a complete surprise. The FEMA worker had already been contacting previous employers in anticipation of potential layoffs.

“For the past, like, month, I was prepping for this,” they said. “So to me, it was just a matter of timing.”

Some federal workers who lost their jobs say they no longer want to work for the government. They’re looking for work elsewhere.

That seems to be what Musk and DOGE want. A FAQ page on the OPM website states: “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”

Jada La Fontaine, who worked out of the EPA’s regional office in Philadelphia, was put on administrative leave Feb. 6 before being laid off on Feb 18. Now, she’s looking for another job in environmental justice — ensuring universal access to clean air, water, and land.

“I feel my energy may be best spent outside of the federal government just considering the explicit attack on workers that are trying to address these types of issues,” she said.

As part of her job at the EPA, she connected with nonprofits that were working in communities afflicted by environmental issues, building trust with those groups and helping them understand funding opportunities.

“The trust in the federal government that was very, very hard to try to cultivate is now entirely erased,” she said.

Another probationary employee, who got laid off at the General Services Administration in Philadelphia, said she too is steering clear of federal work in her job search. She spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing the conditions of her layoff or future employment opportunities.

“Do I even want to work for an organization that doesn’t technically want me there?” the former GSA employee said. “I don’t want any type of government-affiliated job at this particular point.”

She took a $10,000 pay cut for her former job with the belief that government employment could mean job security and good benefits. Her work included managing contracts and relationships with contractors as well as issuing requests for proposals for construction work on federally owned or leased buildings.

“The most disheartening thing is, why hire me if I’m gonna be let go?” after being employed at GSA for a few months, she said. “I could have stayed at my previous job.”

The judge’s decision on Thursday doesn’t change her current situation. She said the layoff has taken an emotional toll on her.

“Every day I fight to not fall into a depression,” she said. “I have God, I have faith, and I have my village around me supporting me.”