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.
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?