I Wasn’t Fired for ‘Inadequate Performance’

In “

Trump Layoffs Hit Probationary Workers” (U.S. News, Feb. 14), U.S. Office of Personnel Management officials are reported to have directed federal agencies to focus on “low-performing” newly hired federal workers. On the contrary, agencies are firing most probationary, meaning nontenured, workers en masse, regardless of their performance. I am one such casualty. Recently hired by the Health and Human Services Department, I worked on Medicare issues, tasked with recouping money for the government. I was fired for supposed inadequate performance but was too new to have had an official performance review. Instead, all my informal feedback had been positive, and my formal reviews during my previous years of federal service had been uniformly outstanding.

Probationary employees may be fired for inadequate performance, and they have narrow grounds to appeal to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. In practice, agencies are indiscriminately firing masses of probationary employees supposedly for poor performance, without regard to the employees’ actual performance or the value of their work to the American public.