USA: Federal employees fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE now being rehired

Hundreds of federal employees who were laid off during Elon Musk's cost-cutting crusade earlier this year are now being asked to return to work.

The General Services Administration (GSA) has offered employees who manage government offices until the end of the week to accept or deny reinstatement, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. 

Those who accept must report for duty on October 6, following what was essentially a seven-month paid vacation during which the GSA incurred exorbitant costs in their absence.

The GSA was founded in the 1940s to centralise the acquisition and management of thousands of federal workplaces. Its return-to-work request is consistent with rehiring efforts at several agencies targeted by Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Last month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)  said that it would let some employees, who accepted resignation offers, stay on the job. 

The Labour Department has also reinstated some employees who accepted buyouts, while the National Park Service has already reinstated several purged staff members.

GSA vs DOGE: What happened

DOGE targeted the agency, which had approximately 12,000 workers at the start of the Trump administration, as a key target in its campaign to cut federal government fraud, waste, and abuse.

A small group of Musk's trusted associates remained at GSA headquarters, often sleeping on cots on the agency's sixth floor, and pursued preparations to unexpectedly terminate roughly half of the 7,500 leases in the government portfolio. DOGE also urged GSA to sell hundreds of federally owned buildings, with the intention of saving billions of dollars.

However, pushback to GSA's dumping of its portfolio was quick, and both projects have been scaled back. More than 480 leases that were scheduled for termination by DOGE have since been preserved.

DOGE's "Wall of Receipts," which had claimed that lease cancellations alone would save approximately $460 million, has recently cut that projection to $140 million by the end of July.

Meanwhile, GSA implemented significant job cuts. The government reduced GSA's headquarters staff by 79 per cent, portfolio managers by 65 per cent, and facilities managers by 35 per cent, a federal official briefed on the matter informed The Associated Press.