Hundreds of federal employees who lost their jobs in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.
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The General Services Administration (GSA) has given the employees – who managed government workspaces – until the end of the week to accept or decline reinstatement, according to an internal memo obtained by Associated Press. Those who accept must report for duty on October 6 after what amounts to a seven-month paid holiday, during which time the GSA in some cases racked up high costs – passed along to taxpayers – to stay in dozens of properties whose leases it had slated for termination or allowed to expire.
“Ultimately, the outcome was [that] the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.”
Becker, who represents owners with government leases at Arco Real Estate Solutions, said GSA had been in a “triage mode” for months. He said the sudden reversal of the downsizing reflects how Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) had gone too far, too fast.
Rehiring of purged federal employees
GSA was established in the 1940s to centralise the acquisition and management of thousands of federal workplaces. Its return to work request mirrors rehiring efforts at several agencies targeted by Doge. Last month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it would allow some employees who took a resignation offer to remain on the job. The Labour Department has also brought back some employees who took buyouts, while the National Park Service earlier reinstated a number of purged employees.