AFGE Local 2883 Press Statement on October 2025 Firings

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 12, 2025

Press Contact: Feldman Strategies, team@feldmanstrategies.com

ATLANTA – Today, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 2883, representing workers out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Atlanta HQ, condemned the Trump administration’s politically-motivated stunt to illegally fire more than 1,300 CDC federal employees during the government shutdown, citing retaliatory reasons for their removal.

The administration has claimed these employees were “mistakenly” placed on notice because of a coding error. Within 24 hours of receipt of the original reduction-in-force (RIF) notices, around 700 employees received emails rescinding their illegal terminations. More than 600 workers remain unjustly fired, not including the nearly 2,000 previously terminated earlier this year. AFGE Local 2883 is demanding that all notices be rescinded immediately.

AFGE Local 2883 President, Yolanda Jacobs, reacted to the illegal firings, which came just two months after a gunman fired nearly 500 rounds at members and employees working at the CDC Roybal Campus in Atlanta, with the following statement:

“The administration’s illegal firing of over 1,300 CDC workers during the shutdown is a callous attack on hard-working Americans and puts the livelihoods, health and safety of our members and communities at great risk. For nearly a year now, our members have been bullied, tormented and left in a constant state of panic about job security.

The accounts of irreparable harm being done continue to unfold: Human resource workers brought back from furlough and forced to send themselves RIF notices with effective dates of December 8, 2025; CDC mental health professionals who have supported employees affected by the August 8, 2025, shooting attack on CDC’s Atlanta-based headquarters, now finding themselves facing termination. The administration has more than delivered on its promise to traumatize federal employees.

The majority of our members are working-class people. They don’t own summer homes, yachts, or ‌vast assets. Many of them live paycheck to paycheck. These reckless actions are disrupting and destroying the lives of everyday working people, who are constantly being used as bargaining chips. They deserve the same opportunity any other American deserves – the ability to put food on the table for their families, pay their rent or mortgage, and not have to wake up each day wondering if they’ll be fired because they are federal employees.

The instability created by this administration weakens public health. This is about more than “layoffs.” This is about using other people ‌in furtherance of a partisan political agenda. We need the American people to tell their lawmakers that they value their fellow American-taxpaying federal workers and that enough is enough.”

AFGE National, on behalf of the more than 800,000 federal and D.C. workers it represents, is currently challenging President Trump’s illegal, unprecedented abuse of power in court.