These federal employees feel stretched thin by attrition and worn down by regulatory rollbacks.
Workers at the Environmental Protection Agency say staffing and morale levels have fallen so low that they’re calling for a new “bill of rights” to protect the EPA’s scientific integrity.
“There’s been an attack on the EPA from a lot of directions ― an attack on EPA science, an attack on our regulations, and an attack on the workers who actually do the work,” said Dreyfus, who is also Local 1236 president for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing EPA workers.
Story continuesThe White House has made some of its most aggressive regulatory rollbacks at the EPA, often in clear conflict with the scientific record. Last summer the EPA unilaterally implemented a union contract that cut back on agency employees’ telework opportunities and booted union officials from their offices. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge against agency leadership, claiming they didn’t bargain in good faith before forcing the contract on employees. The Federal Labor Relations Authority, which referees such disputes in the federal government, ultimately determined that the agency had bargained in bad faith.
Powell said one of the biggest problems she’s seen is the exit of agency veterans, which has foisted work onto less experienced employees. “That institutional knowledge takes a long time to rebuild,” she said. “There are folks feeling so overwhelmed right now.”
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