ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — Warren Hill spent more than two decades working at the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, which spans 4 million acres of coastline, forests, lakes and glaciers in Alaska.
Last summer, he was promoted to serve as maintenance supervisor, in addition to his roles as carpenter and mechanic. But because Hill was starting a new role, he was on probationary status when President Donald Trump ’s administration began firing thousands and thousands of federal workers who had less civil service protection.
“I’m furious,” he said. “I am just a few years away from retirement, not to mention all my benefits disappeared in a flash.”
Probationary employees are generally younger, with less than a year or two on the job. However, the classification can also apply to workers with much more experience who were placed on probation when they transferred between agencies or moved into a different position. Now many have been swept up in layoffs championed by Elon Musk, the […]
One of the issues raised in these terminations which appears to have gone unremarked is a ubiquitous feature of employment here in the United States: the arbitrary nature of performance reviews. I have consistently read that many of these terminated staff members were getting positive, even complementary, reviews only to be fired for “Poor performance”, without the need of substantiation by the supervisory staff. Sadly, this experience is replicated across the country in thousands of workplaces. Supervisors are arbitrary and capricious in their judgments and the workers can do little in recourse. This state of affairs is fostered due to the over four decade bipartisan war on labor and unions. Don’t like this? Then you have to change the structure. Think outside the box.