‘Vitriol and blame.’ Laid-off federal workers face polarized landscape and uncertainty
When local companies in the Puget Sound region have cut jobs in the past, bitterness generally has been directed at the employer, not the employees.
One expert explained why that’s not what’s happening today when it comes to federal workers.
Kathleen Cook is a professor and practicum director in the Department of Psychology at Seattle University. In an interview Wednesday with The News Tribune, she said it’s not surprising the public response to federal layoffs is more reactionary than what you’d see in private-sector firings.
“Normally, when there’s a layoff, it’s a layoff driven by a business decision, and that business decision, the particular business, rarely has a particular value embedded in it,” she said.
“In this situation, they aren’t layoffs in the sense of the way we’ve always thought of them. Now all these things have been conflated with particular ideologies, particular values, particular statements of what and how the world should be.”
On Wednesday, President Trump was asked in an Oval Office news conference if he felt responsible for so many federal workers losing their jobs.
“Sure I do. I feel very badly ... but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work,” NBC News reported.
“We’re keeping the best people,” he added.
That sentiment has carried over to social media, with responses to news coverage of firings often split between anger over the cuts and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, and dismissiveness that the workers deserve any sympathy at all.
In the meantime, career federal employees are facing difficult choices about their futures, much like anyone facing a layoff, but with ongoing court battles to preserve their jobs and public polarization over their fate.
On Thursday, a federal judge in California ordered thousands of probationary workers reinstated at the Departments of Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy and Interior, calling the government’s supportive declarations in the case a “sham.”
The order noted that other “reduction in force” orders remained legal while extending a restraining order blocking Office of Personnel Management from further mass firings.
The Trump administration vowed Thursday to contest the order, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt calling the order “absurd and unconstitutional.”
A separate ruling late Thursday by a Maryland U.S. district judge also temporarily restrained the government from any planned workforce reductions across 18 agencies, including the Department of Education.
Social media fanning flames
Cook said social media doesn’t offer respite, as opposed to previous decades when government reductions likely would have occurred without much fanfare.
“I would say that social media certainly fans the flames,” she said, with opposing sides amplifying what they think the cuts represent and elected officials adding to the fire.
“No way are (federal workers) being treated as individuals in this situation, rather it’s their representation of the other, the out group,” to their critics, she said.
Cook said ultimately it’s not about individual workers.
When you take time to tell the story of a fired individual, explain that “the person across the street ... is the reason they got that check, or they were able to get a passport, or whatever it is, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, I don’t mean them,’” Cook noted.
She described negative feedback loops, such as what followed the killing of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson, as people losing sight of “how much of their life is tethered to the society, the communal structure and common good that we’ve all agreed upon to make.
“It’s like a miasma of vitriol and blame that is looking for a place to land.”
Uncertain futures and fighting stereotypes
On Thursday, fired workers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington state described their current situation.
The former workers were tied to various facets of monitoring fish populations and fisheries oversight in the region, each specialized in their own particular field.
Rebecca Howard was a former research fish biologist at the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center. She said a career in marine science was something she’d worked toward since childhood.
Howard’s work involved assessing Alaska’s populations of shellfish and ground fish, and she said she considered it her “dream job.”
“I have been working toward a career in marine science since I was a child, and the indiscriminate firing of federal employees not only affects my career, it also jeopardizes the work that NOAA Fisheries does at the Alaska Fishery Science Center,” she said.
The news conference was part of Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s continuing series of virtual events featuring fired federal workers from Washington state telling their stories to news reporters.
Mark Baltzell is a former fishery management specialist who worked with states and tribes on the management of fisheries for salmon and steelhead on the West Coast. He is based in the Olympia area.
Describing himself as a single dad “supporting a teenage daughter and two dogs,” Baltzell said he was given “68 minutes to pack my office and walk away.”
“I have a great support system and a group of friends and a lot of people in the salmon industry that are supportive,” he said. “I feel pretty supported, but I know a lot of my colleagues aren’t.”
On Tuesday, a disabled veteran responded to a question during another Murray-organized news conference. The question sought reaction to people who have contended disabled veterans can’t do the work or might not even show up to work.
“To hear all these remarks about their service, not being of quality ... is just disrespectful and really disheartening for us in the workforce looking at one another every day as we work hard, work extra long hours, work overtime on weekends, just to make sure that we are meeting our quotas,” said Future Zhou, Army veteran and former inventory-management specialist with VA Puget Sound.
“For somebody to go on the news and say that we’re incompetent or that we’re lazy is just completely false,” Zhou added.
John Horn is a professor of practice in economics at Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis. Horn warned in an interview with PBS News published this week that negative framing of federal workers by public officials could affect their future employment.
“The federal government, DOGE in particular, is framing this as, ‘These are the worst workers, these are the unproductive workers. These are the people that don’t provide any value to the government,’” he told PBS. He added, “They’re doing a job, and that job is something which isn’t as immediately noticeable to us, but it matters.”
Tough transition and ESD help
Workplace columnist, author and blogger Lynne Curry recently wrote that federal workers were facing “unexpected hostility from the private sector.”
Curry wrote, “While many fired federal workers expect empathy from their new colleagues, they may not find it. Federal employees kept their salaries, pensions, and health insurance during the pandemic, while private sector workers lost their jobs or had their salaries cut.”
Curry noted that a shift from public to private sector work also could bring culture shock to longtime government workers used to process and documentation rather than profits and speed. Curry also noted they could face lengthy searches for their next job, competing “with private sector workers over a limited number of openings for white-collar work.”
Amid all the turbulence, some outside assistance is starting to kick in.
Washington state has approximately 76,000 federal employees, according to the latest Quarterly Census of Employment Wages data. The state’s Employment Security Department reported last week that an average of 25 claims per day had been filed with the state by former federal workers the last 21 days, including weekends.
ESD announced Thursday that it would co-host three webinars in March, April and May. The webinars aim “to help federal workers who were laid off, facing a furlough or expecting a workforce reduction,” according to the announcement, featuring information on available unemployment benefits and re-employment resources. (Links to register for the webinars can be found at ESD’s website.)
ESD said the webinars are part of the state’s “rapid response efforts for large layoffs,” in a collaboration with state and local agencies.
The former NOAA employees were asked at Thursday’s news conference whether they’d want to return to their jobs if offered. While expressing concerns over future firings, each indicated they’d like to return.
“Prior to receiving my termination notice ... I was kind of just waiting for that email to come, and so being put back in that stressful situation is not something I would look forward to,” said Howard.
“But this is what I wanted to do with my career. And so I would take it back.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘Vitriol and blame.’ Laid-off federal workers face polarized landscape and uncertainty."
