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One month after rescinding job offers for thousands of seasonal employees, the National Park Service appears to have partially reversed course. The Los Angeles Times reports that a memo sent from the Interior department to Park Service officials approved the hiring of 7,700 seasonal employees this year, an increase from the 6,300 seasonal employees in recent years.
But the extra seasonal hires still wouldn't offset the loss of roughly 1,000 full-time park service employees who were fired last Friday in Elon Musk's purge of "probationary" government employees. Additionally, seasonal workers aren't necessarily eligible for the same benefits as permanent government employees.
On the latest episode of CWP's podcast, The Landscape, hosts Kate Groetzinger and Aaron Weiss talk to Mitch Flanigan, who was fired from his full-time job at Denali National Park. Even though Flanigan was categorized as an essential government employee, who would keep working even through a government shut down in order to care for the park's sled dogs, he lost his job last week. They're also joined by Tim Whitehouse, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, to talk about the devastating effects of the layoffs.
There's also no indication that the White House intends to change course on national forest lands, where 3,400 workers were fired last week. Five unions representing federal employees nationwide are challenging the mass firings in court, arguing that the executive branch has usurped congressional power and is violating the law that defines how agencies must handle large-scale layoffs.
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So everything has a trade-off, but yeah. There’s pluses to global warming as well as negatives.”
