The US State Department sent on Friday (11) dismissal notifications to more than 1,300 employees in the country and abroad at the beginning of a reduction in its “swollen” labor force as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to restructure the federal government.
According to local press reports, warnings were email to more than 1,100 civil service employees and about 250 US Foreign Affairs Service officers, which will also be placed on administrative license within 90 to 120 days from the date they were informed of their resignation.
The elimination of these positions is part of a plan to centralize and consolidate the operations of the agency without affecting its operation, which was prepared by Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Rubio had already communicated to Congress in May the intention to reduce the folder’s workforce in the US, which currently has 18,000 employees.
According to the head of US diplomacy, the purpose of this restructuring is to simplify a “swollen bureaucracy that suffocates innovation and allocates scarce resources” and also eliminate traces of “radical political ideology.”
According to The New York Timesthe reorganization of the State Department’s workforce will mainly affect the offices focused on human rights and refugees, a work that will now be assimilated by regional offices.
“We inherited a dynamic that needed reform and we are implementing it,” State Department spokesman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Thursday, insisting that the government believes in a foreign policy that prioritizes US interests.
The beginning of the wave of mass layoffs in the state department occurs after the US Supreme Court on Tuesday unlocked an executive order that allowed the Trump government to continue the reductions of federal civil servants.
