Facing a backlog of school discrimination cases, the U.S. Department of Education has asked hundreds of employees it fired months ago to temporarily return to work.
A Dec. 5 email obtained by USA TODAY shows the agency ordered a significant portion of staffers in the Office for Civil Rights to come back later this month. In the “return to duty” directive, officials acknowledged they’re facing a sizable caseload of civil rights complaints, and they underscored a need to utilize every resource at the government’s disposal to work through them.
The agency said the request applies to roughly 250 workers who’ve been on administrative leave for months amid legal challenges to their March firings. Julie Hartman, the Education Department’s press secretary for legal affairs, stressed there still aren’t any plans to fully rehire those workers permanently.
DoE: “Our case load has become too much to handle. We need you to come back to work, but we don’t want to actually give your jobs back.”
The fired workers: “Go fuck yourself.”
Hopefully.
Or better yet …
Fired workers: … sure, I’ll come back on one condition … you give me four times the rate of pay I had before … then when your stupid backlog is taken care of … you can go fuck yourself.
… oh you don’t want to pay four times the rate? … no problem … go fuck yourself.
Exactly.
Oh, you still need me?
I’m a contractor now, lets talk rates.
Trump solving the cost of living crisis, one department at a time! ATCs, now dept of education! The man’s a jeenius!
/s for the dim witted ones.
Alternatively, this is the civil rights division. These people likely care about civil rights and are pissed at the people who fired them. Lot of room for adversarial behavior as employees here
Yeah any slight hint of civil rights violation would be getting the full settlement in my case load.
I like yours better.
No one with a better option is coming back and waiting tables is more lucrative than teaching. If anyone comes to the departments aid it will be the dregs.
Just a quick note on your comment. The teacher salaries in Washington State, California, and New York are actually acceptable if you accrue enough time and education.
Hey, they wouldn’t fire those guys in the first place.
Probably a pretty rough spot for those employees. I imagine their pensions, health benefits and retirement stuff hinges on the definition of administrative leave etc.
If you were one of the employees on admin leave with a sick kid dependent on that healthcare plan… How big a risk would you make your kid take for you?
“We’re firing you, but you’re ‘ordered’ back to work”
. . . for a short time. You don’t get your old job back.