Donald Trump Plans Largest Federal Layoff In Nearly A Decade, Firing 1,100 Rural Forest Service Workers
Donald Trump’s administration has announced what will be the largest federal layoff in nearly a decade, firing 1,100 employees from a Forest Service program that works with disadvantaged youth to train them to fight wildfires.
As The Washington Post reported, the layoff will strike rural areas the hardest, with more than 3,000 students enrolled in the Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers in states like Montana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Oregon. As the report noted, the job cuts will strike in areas that had been strongholds for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The report added that Trump’s plan to dismantle the program would be the largest layoff of civil servants since a military base realignment nearly halfway through Barack Obama’s first term in office. Trump’s plan would transfer the program to the Labor Department, claiming that the Forest Service operations are low-performing and inefficient.
But details of the plan remained hazy even among other members of the Trump administration, with Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen telling reporters that she didn’t have all the details.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said that the decision came down to a matter of priorities for the Trump administration, and the program was not high on them.
“As USDA looks to the future, it is imperative that the Forest Service focus on and prioritize our core natural resource mission to improve the condition and resilience of our Nation’s forests, and step away from activities and programs that are not essential to that core mission,” Perdue wrote.
This is not the first action of the Trump administration to have a disproportionate impact on rural areas. Trump’s escalating trade war with China has struck rural farmers by cutting off access to those looking to buy soybeans, NPR noted.
Trump is cutting 1,100 federal jobs, killing a Forest Service program that trains youth in fire fighting, @Reinlwapo reports https://t.co/tmSNYdjR9E
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) May 25, 2019
Some farmers, such as Denny Friest of Iowa, have had to look elsewhere to avoid losing money as a result of Chinese tariffs. Friest told the radio news outlet that he has traveled to Vietnam, the Philippines, and a number of other countries meeting with prospective buyers for U.S. agricultural products.
“As a corn grower and a soybean grower and a pork producer, these markets are very key to everything that I need to create demand for the product we grow,” said Friest, who is on the board of directors for Iowa Corn. “We’re the low-cost producers of food in the world and we just need fair access to these markets.”
It is not yet clear when the Trump administration’s job cuts to the Forest Service program would go into effect.
