The Trump administration has rescinded the layoff notices sent to hundreds of employees at the Voice of America after staff encountered errors in documents outlining the terms, which could subsequently nullify or delay President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the news outlet.
The email sent on Friday rescinded the layoff notices from last week. The missive was sent by the Voice of America’s human resources office to staff based in Washington. About 90 percent of its union-protected staff live in the nation’s capital, the layoff plan the Trump administration sent to Congress earlier this month stated.
However, the reporters and support staff aren’t being called back to work. The email stated that the agency overseeing Voice of America, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, “will be running another RIF in the near future.” RIF refers to the acronym for federal layoffs, meaning “reductions in force.”
“Please be advised that there will be no change to your current status,” the email said. “If you are currently in an administrative leave status, you will remain on administrative leave. If you were recalled back to duty, you will remain in work status unless otherwise notified.”
Hundreds of reporters and support staff had already been scheduled to be laid off on September 1.
Former Arizona senatorial and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, now a senior advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is heading the effort to dismantle Voice of America. She said in an email that she’s still set to reduce the agency’s staff by 85 percent, according to The New York Times.
“The email that went out today allows employees to access and update their personnel files ahead of completion of the RIF,” said Lake.
The Trump administration has argued that Voice of America is the source of liberal “propaganda.” Trump signed an executive order in March pushing for the dismantling of the global media agency and placed almost all Voice of America journalists on paid leave. It was the first time its work ceased since it was founded in 1942. Trump said on Wednesday that Voice of America is a “Democrat mouthpiece” and that congressional Republicans should “kill” it.
However, the attempt to gut the agency appears to have been delayed because of administrative errors in how the administration has handled the layoff process. Some of the documents sent last week included errors such as incorrect years of service, birth dates, and veteran status, Voice of America staff who received documents with errors told The Times.
A federal workers’ union, the American Federation of Government Employees, represents Voice of America staff. The president of the local chapter, Paula Hickey, noted to The Times that the agency had to rescind the layoff notices as many of the inaccuracies violated the contract with the union. If those errors remained unresolved, the union could bring a complaint or initiate an arbitration process. That could eventually nullify the firings.
The global media agency was ordered in 2011 to rehire and provide back pay to employees it had fired years previously after a federal arbitrator determined that the layoffs had been made incorrectly.
