Some of the Atlanta-based federal government workers who were recently laid off due to cost-saving efforts by the Trump administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had questions for their union leader on Thursday that she couldn’t answer.
IT specialist Ryan Melton was one of nearly 600 laid off Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees who participated in a Thursday night Microsoft Teams Q&A session with local leaders of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).
Melton is a self-described U.S. Army veteran who was still in the one-year probationary period of employment at the CDC when he was informed of his termination last week. He said he hasn’t taken a day off since starting at the CDC roughly eight months ago. He wanted to know if he will receive payment for the PTO days he accrued.
Melton said he needs it to help pay for the new house he can no longer afford.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said during the virtual call. “My back is against the wall right now. I’m a disabled vet, yeah. But that money don’t go that long when interest rates and housing prices are as high as they are.”
Yolanda Jacobs, president of AFGE Local 2883, did her best to console and reassure those on the call that their union is doing everything it can to help them.
Jacobs estimates that African Americans like her and Melton make up a larger, disproportionate share of local and national AFGE members — as well as those who were laid off this week — and she expects the wave of terminations will have an economic ripple effect in metro Atlanta, where the gap between the haves and have-nots is still the widest in the nation, according to a 2024 Bankrate study.
“There probably will be people who lose their homes,” Jacobs said. “And then when it comes to being able to rent when they lose their home, that’s going to be pretty difficult, because rents are sky-high in Atlanta.”
Jacobs said some federal employees fighting to keep their jobs have been scrubbing their LinkedIn profiles of any mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative participation. Trump administration officials have been working to rid the federal government of all DEI workers, but Jacobs said many Black employees who participated in DEI programs were ordered to do so by their superiors.
“The majority of them at the CDC, they didn’t volunteer to do that work,” Jacobs said. “The ones who were leading the DEI initiatives at CDC were majority white.”
A former CDC executive coordinator who asked to not be named wondered what the “end game” will be for the estimated 700 local CDC workers who’ve received layoff notices since Valentine’s Day.
A related federal worker class-action lawsuit has already been filed. The executive coordinator said one of her former male co-workers — who recently received a termination letter — died shortly thereafter. She worries the stress of a sudden job loss played a role in his demise.
“We just want our jobs back,” she said on the call. “It’s frustrating. It’s depressing.”
Jacobs said securing a federal union job can be a socioeconomic game changer for Black Georgians, whose estimated $57,000 median household income is far less than the roughly $82,000 typical income white families earn. Typical Black households in Atlanta earn closer to about $28,000 annually, according to Kindred Futures, a local nonprofit formerly known as the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative.
In contrast, salaries for federal government employees in metro Atlanta usually range from $70,000 to $150,000, Jacobs said.
“That can change the course for a Black family living in Atlanta,” she added. “For a lot of Black people, federal employment is a dream come true.”
Jessica Ingram hopes her dream doesn’t soon turn into a nightmare. The 37-year-old disability examiner for the Social Security Administration was one of the local federal workers and supporters who participated in one of the recent layoff protests in metro Atlanta this week. She said she and her co-workers have been on edge since DOGE’s first round of layoffs was announced.
“It’s been nerve-wracking,” Ingram said Wednesday. “We are not getting much information. It’s just kind of in flux.”
Ingram found it ironic that Musk’s DOGE department, which launched in January, is responsible for eliminating other federal jobs. She noted that similar efficiency departments already exist in most federal agencies, calling DOGE a “made-up agency” that is “redundant.”
Jacobs told laid-off union members on Thursday that AFGE would do its best to minimize their suffering.
“A lot of you are in a really bad position, and what we’re trying to do is the best we can to help you navigate that,” she told the workers. “It seems like no one cares about what happens — whether you keep your home, you lose it, whether your children eat, whether you can even feed yourself.”
