“Lost In The Chaos And Damage:” Former Federal Workers Meet With Their Virginia Legislators

 by Cindy

Last night, the Alexandria Area Federal Employee Alumni Support Network met with a few members of their legislative delegation to discuss the problems federal workers continue to face since the Trump administration abruptly ended their federal careers.

Participants spanned a wide group of ages and employment situations; including some who were contractors, some who were in post-docs, others who had been permanent agency employees for decades, as well as those who were still within their probationary period. They came from a variety of agencies, including FEMA, HHS, the Department of Agriculture, GSA, USAID, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and others. Some had found new jobs since leaving the federal workforce, but many were still without a job. They had lost their work due to grants being cut, Reduction In Forces (RIFs), and Deferred Resignation Programs (DRPs), with many receiving no severance pay or still awaiting promised retirement benefits. “We feel lost in the chaos and damage that’s being done,” one member said.

The workers met with legislators and their staff from the Alexandria and Northern Virginia area: Senator Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, Delegates Kirk McPike, Garrett McGuire, Paul Krizek attended in person, while House Leader Charniele Herring and Senate Leader Scott Surovell sent their chiefs of staff.

The workers described the challenges with finding new jobs. Like most federal workers, they have spent years or decades acquiring very niche skills that made them excellent at the specific government work they performed, but were not working towards anything necessarily marketable in the private sector. They need help making this pivot, figuring out how to translate those skills or pick up new ones. They said they are facing very real age discrimination, and in many cases having to compete with thousands of other applicants for jobs they are entirely overqualified for, which pay far lower salaries than they were making. They urged the legislators to “please remember the talent and the human cost of not having a place to land.”

The workers talked about the hodgepodge of services available through local and state government and nonprofits, and how difficult it is to find help and to navigate among the various agencies and organizations that have funding and resources available to help them find new jobs. They urged the legislators to work with localities and with the Spanberger administration to streamline access to help, and to advertise what resources exist.

One organization that received a shoutout for being a “shining star” was the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) program, which has lots of resources, including grants that federal workers can use to build new skills. But they are “crushed under the number of federal workers” seeking help, and desperately need more funding from the General Assembly. On the contrary, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Talent Capital Initiative, an AI-powered job matching site, which the House budget currently allocates an additional $200,000 in funding to support, got some not-so great reviews from the displaced federal workers who had tried to navigate its job services. They called it “messy” and “glitchy,” and one participant said that for example they entered their information to look for a new job only to be directed to jobs in Turkey that had already been filled. The participants suggested that any further funding sent toward this project should ideally be conditioned on improvements that take into account user feedback, if funding is provided at all.

Participants discussed the Virginia House emergency committee on federal cuts that met throughout last year and heard from experts on the severity and impacts of the federal funding cuts and job losses. That culminated in a report with a handful of practical recommendations to assist displaced federal workers. Unfortunately, none of the legislators who were in attendance were on that committee, and didn’t know whether the specific recommendations had been acted on, but they cited some related legislation to assist federal workers that had passed this session:

• Renter’s eviction protections (HB837 and SB273; HB527 and SB628; HB15 and SB48)
• Increase to the amount of unemployment benefits (SB759 and HB1320)
• Preferential hiring in state government for former federal workers (HB494)
• Noncompete clauses invalid if worker doesn’t receive severance (SB170)

Delegate Krizek explained that under the previous administration, it was difficult to accomplish anything to support displaced federal workers, and that it probably felt like a hodgepodge because the localities had to set up resources on their own under an unfriendly governor; but he was optimistic that under the Spanberger administration, which quickly created a new Task Force to address these issues, there would be improvements.

The legislators also mentioned that while their job is primarily looking for legislative fixes—where isn’t a particularly fast way to address problems as immediate and urgent as the workers are facing—they are also happy to help their constituents more directly by writing reference letters for jobs, helping recommend small business startups for state contracts, and generally navigating access to state resources. They suggested that constituents .cc them in conversations they’re having with local workforce development resources as well, which can help them understand what services are and are not working well.

Finally, it was mentioned (and didn’t really need explicit mention, because many members struggled to speak while holding back tears as they talked about how important the work they had been doing was, how they were treated by DOGE/Trump, and how lost and invalidated they now feel) that there is an underlying mental health crisis here and one participant said that if federal workers don’t get help soon, it is likely to become a “federal worker suicide crisis.”