HHS Betrays Its Workforce...Again

HHS and CDC are finalizing the illegal firings of hundreds of civil servants. This compounds recent trauma experienced by CDC employees during the August 8, 2025, targeted attack and fails to protect public health from future threats. 

Just days ago, a gunman inspired by inaccurate rhetoric demonizing public health workers carried out a targeted attack at CDC’s Roybal campus. This attack tragically took the life of Officer David Rose. Today, HHS and CDC are moving forward with illegally firing hundreds of civil servants permanently, many of whom directly supported violence prevention work.

To the members of our CDC community: we stand with you in this trauma and refuse to concede. The cruel decision to move forward with these unlawful separations immediately after a violent attack on campus contradicts their stated commitments to promote the recovery of CDC staff and undermines the stability of our Agency. The decision to compound this trauma is not an oversight: this was a shameful, active choice. It must be reversed. 

Some of the offices and divisions now being separated include the very groups that have worked to keep everyone safe from violence and injuries; to track and respond to HIV outbreaks; to form and strengthen public health partnerships to promote immunization; to conduct research and control costly chronic diseases debilitating millions of Americans like Alzheimer’s, Arthritis, oral health issues, and others; to support workforce operations; and more. Loss of these workers leaves us more vulnerable to further violence and ignores the importance of this work to the American people.

These separations also mean CDC has lost hundreds of trained public health professionals it can no longer call upon for emergency responses like pandemics, outbreaks, and natural disasters. This will significantly cripple the agency’s capability to respond swiftly and effectively the next time our nation faces a public health crisis.

When we face that next public health crisis, we do so with a decimated and demoralized workforce. HHS has shown that it does not have the organizational or operational capacity to take over the support functions that the agency had before these firings. This reduction in force was operationally a mess. They have shown they are in no way prepared to support CDC when America needs it most.

Due to a staggering lack of transparency from HHS, AFGE Local 2883 has not received formal notice of which groups are being separated today so we can’t even determine the full extent of everything being lost. However, we know that America is less safe, our public health system is weaker than ever before, and our workforce is less capable of responding to public health threats. If nothing is done, the effect of this could last throughout our children's lifetime, or even beyond.

To all the members of the public health workforce who receive separation notices in the coming days: what they have done to us is unconscionable. We will be in touch as soon as we can with organized recommendations and legal coordination for filing MSPB appeals developed by volunteers within our local. We invite you to read the resources we’ve already developed for next steps after separation.

We’ll continue to share resources from trusted external groups for next steps. We remain convinced that these actions are illegal, and the outcome of the pending lawsuits will be favorable for RIF’ed employees.

We also encourage everyone in our community to make use of the resources for responding to trauma that have been shared over the past few days. See our initial statement for some of these resources, or free resources from the Grady health system here.

We are working to provide additional resources as soon as we can. Please stay connected for upcoming calls to action and ways to fight!

In solidarity and community,

AFGE Local 2883