On Valentine’s Day, Eric Anderson received an e mail from an tackle he didn’t acknowledge within the U.S. Division of the Inside.
“The Division decided that you’ve got didn’t display health or {qualifications} for continued employment as a result of your subject material information, expertise, and skills don’t meet the Division’s present wants, and it’s needed and applicable to terminate,” the e-mail learn.
This curt message is how Anderson, 48, discovered he had been fired from his job on the Indiana Dunes Nationwide Park in Northwest Indiana, the state’s solely nationwide park. He labored as a Dunes firefighter.
“The primary couple days, I felt type of dangerous about myself,” Anderson stated. However then he stopped himself:
“I do know that I’ve constructive evaluations. I do know that I received a advantage bonus as a result of I used to be doing a great job. I needed to cease and take a step again and say, ‘You already know what? This isn’t about me. That is about an across-the-board ‘sledgehammer to chop a steak’ type of strategy.”
Anderson, who lives in Chicago along with his spouse and two youngsters, was amongst 1,000 probationary workers of the Nationwide Park Service to lose their jobs on the identical day.
The transfer is a part of the Trump administration’s livid try and shrink the federal workforce, by means of the Elon Musk–led unofficial “Division of Authorities Effectivity.” The drastic downsizing has touched workers in lots of departments, together with Veterans Affairs, Power, Training and the Environmental Safety Company.
A few of the cuts are being challenged in court docket. U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, an Indiana Democrat whose district consists of the Indiana Dunes, is talking out towards the layoffs there.
“As a member of the Home Appropriations Committee, I imagine it’s unconstitutional to vary and never implement appropriation laws signed into legislation,” Mrvan stated in a press release.
Advocates and guests for the nationwide parks are additionally sounding alarms.
“Fewer employees means shorter customer middle hours, delayed openings and closed campgrounds,″ Kristen Brengel, senior vp of presidency affairs on the Nationwide Parks Conservation Affiliation, advised the Related Press.
Betsy Maher, government director of the Save the Dunes advocacy group, says the layoffs her group is conscious of influence restoration work and upkeep that “can have a direct influence on customer expertise as we shortly strategy peak visitation season.”
Maher stated the park was already understaffed earlier than these layoffs. When the Dunes grew to become a nationwide park in 2019, she stated it didn’t obtain a funds enhance to satisfy the enhance in guests that adopted.
Anderson, who was employed final June, stated his position on the Dunes included working with the wildland hearth program on the 15,000-acre park, which stretches from Gary to Michigan Metropolis. He labored on prescribed burns, utilizing hearth as a software to assist handle the land, management for invasive species and “assist sure components of the ecosystem develop,” he stated.
The mass firings are the alternative of what would occur if the parks had been operated like a enterprise, he argued.
“If an organization goes to downsize or change a product line, they’ve some strategic planning. They consider the funds,” Anderson stated. “They are saying, ‘Managers, right here’s what we now have to do; work out who you’re going to chop, who you’re going to maintain, who’re the perfect folks to maintain round. None of that was executed.”
Anderson stated his frustration goes past the influence on his personal life.
“This isn’t the fats that’s supposedly on the market within the federal authorities,” he stated of the laid off Nationwide Park Service staffers. “These are working-class folks which might be simply making an attempt to get forward and making an attempt to outlive.”
Michael Puente is a reporter and anchor at WBEZ. Observe him on Bluesky @MikePuenteNews.bsky.social.
