Education Department pays over $7 million a month to employees forced to sit idle

By Sunlen Serfaty, CNN

(CNN) — The US Department of Education is paying more than $7 million a month to employees it has forced to go on leave, according to analysis from the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union that represents department employees.

The payments could continue for years amid a long court battle over cuts instituted by the Trump administration.

The department has already paid more than $21 million to idle employees over the last three months, AFGE has calculated, after they were terminated in March when the agency cut nearly half of its workforce. Roughly 1,300 people were laid off and hundreds more took voluntary “buyouts.”

The firings were part of President Donald Trump’s larger plan to dismantle the Department of Education and promise to deliver efficiencies through cuts across government. Dozens of other agencies have faced cuts in recent months, with workers in those departments facing similar situations.

Under the terms of the layoffs, affected Department of Education workers were to be paid their salaries until June 9, their last day of employment.

However, following a May federal court decision blocking White House plans to shut down the agency, the workers were reinstated and placed on “administrative leave” — meaning they are employed but not allowed to work — as lawsuits continue.

This means salary payments will now continue past Monday, while employees remain in what many describe as “administrative purgatory,” racking up further costs for the department.

According to AFGE Local 252, which analyzed over 900 salaries of affected employees, the true cost to the Department of Education is well over $7 million a month as the figure does not include employee benefits or managers’ pay.

The cuts were billed as a drive for government savings. When announcing the layoffs in March, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said they reflected the agency’s “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”

Critics point out that it has instead generated wasteful costs with no returns when employees continue getting paid for not working.

Meanwhile, numerous employees on administrative leave who are members of Local 252 told CNN they feel embarrassed collecting a paycheck.

After her termination in March, Ariel Shepetovskiy, a Department of Education lawyer, lost access to computer systems and email accounts needed to do her work.

Now on administrative leave, “it feels like garbage to receive pay in exchange for doing nothing,” Shepetovskiy said. “I also feel shame because on some level I feel like a parasite for American taxpayers.”

But, she said, “If I leave my position then there’s no chance of me ever being able to do my job again.”

She is holding on despite the uncertainties because she has hope that employees could be brought back, she said.

“I’m trying to do my best to be productive, but I am also sad. I am frustrated and upset every day.”

Robert Jason Cottrell, a data coordinator with the department, also expressed frustration — wanting, but unable — to work. “I feel like I am on welfare,” he said. “I almost feel like a leech on the system. I am able-bodied and able to go into work to help the nation’s mission to educate our future generations. And I’m not doing that right now.”

CNN has asked the Department of Education for comment.

In an email to staff reviewed by CNN, the agency told workers Friday that they would continue to be employed, and that it was assessing how to “reintegrate you back to the office in the most seamless way possible.”

“This includes evaluating necessary updates to security access, technology, and workspaces to ensure full operability,” the email said.

Dozens of government agencies are involved in lawsuits challenging White House directives cutting their workforce, with workers similarly placed on administrative leave and unable to work across Washington.

As lawsuits drag on, agencies have offered buyouts or settlements to encourage workers to leave.

In recent weeks, some Department of Education employees say they were offered settlements in exchange for resigning their positions. Several employees given the offer told CNN they had cases pending before the Merit Systems Protection Board, or MSPB, a government office that civil servants can use to appeal personnel disputes.

Settlement offers reviewed by CNN would pay for these employees through September if they drop their cases and quit.

Some who received the offers described them as feeling “scammy” and like being plied with “sweet talk” upon receiving them.

Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252 in Dallas, felt the deals amounted to attempts to “intimidate great public servants to leave their jobs.”

Smith, who was laid off in March, said she has heard from over a dozen employees who were approached with these offers in the past two weeks.

Victoria DeLano, who is on administrative leave, said the settlement would mean giving up the option to be reinstated. “I am not giving up that option,” she said. “So many of us are just holding on because we know how important this work is.”

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