\n<\/p>\n
The OCR employees were fired in March as part of a broader reduction in force at the Education Department.<\/p>\n
Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Education Department is calling Office for Civil Rights employees who were fired earlier this year back to work. <\/p>\n
The Trump administration tried to ax half of the Education Department\u2019s OCR staff in March, but it has been paying them not to work since then while it continues to fight litigation contesting its plan. The department says it hasn\u2019t given up on defending that move, but now says it\u2019s \u201cimportant to refocus OCR\u2019s work and utilize all OCR staff to prioritize OCR\u2019s existing complaint caseload.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIn order for OCR to pursue its mission with all available resources, all <\/em>those individuals currently being compensated by the Department need to meet their employee performance expectations and contribute to the enforcement of existing civil rights complaints,\u201d the department said in Friday emails obtained by Inside Higher Ed.<\/em> \u201cUtilizing all OCR employees, including those currently on administrative leave, will bolster and refocus efforts on enforcement activities in a way that serves and benefits parents, students, and families.\u201d<\/p>\n One email gave an employee a Dec.\u00a015 return date, while another said Dec.\u00a029. It\u2019s unclear how many workers will return. Bloomberg<\/em> reported that the order went out to \u201cmore than 260,\u201d while USA Today<\/em> cited the department as saying \u201croughly 250,\u201d but the Associated Press said \u201cdozens.\u201d Inside Higher Ed<\/em> is awaiting clarification from the department. <\/p>\n Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents department employees, said her union hasn\u2019t been told how many workers in its bargaining unit received the email. She said in a statement Monday that \u201cwhile we are relieved these public servants are finally being allowed to return to work, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has made clear that she would rather play politics than uphold her responsibility to protect students\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor more than nine months, hundreds of employees at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have been sidelined from the critical work of protecting our nation\u2019s most vulnerable students and families,\u201d Gittleman said. She said the administration\u2019s actions keeping these employees out of work and on leave \u201cwasted more than $40 million in taxpayer funds.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBy blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department\u2019s own making,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The OCR employees were fired in March as part of a broader reduction in force at the Education Department. Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty Images The Education Department is calling Office for Civil Rights employees who were fired earlier this year back to work. The Trump administration tried to ax half of the Education Department\u2019s OCR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[680,2346,702,514,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-36462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-calls","9":"tag-civil","10":"tag-rights","11":"tag-work","12":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}