Houston’s NASA employees are bracing for layoffs this week

How long until this post is also deleted for being “political” when it’s very, very clearly important for both the present and the future of space?

Apparently, it’s paywalled for some, although my adblockers apparently got around it without saying anything.

Here’s the article:
> NASA employees in the Houston area are bracing for layoffs this week, according to two employees familiar with the situation.

> Managers at the Johnson Space Center told new employees still in their probationary period — which lasts at least one year — that they should prepare to be let go as early as Tuesday. It’s the latest federal agency to face such layoffs as President Donald Trump works to shrink the federal workforce.

> MORE NASA NEWS: NASA is shutting down its diversity programs after Trump directive

> The administration’s actions could affect thousands of government workers across dozens of federal agencies, according to NBC News, which cited data from the Office of Personnel Management. Nearly 3,000 federal employees work at the Johnson Space Center, and NASA has just under 18,000 full-time-equivalent civil servants nationwide, according to 2023 figures.

> The Planetary Society, a space advocacy group, said the layoffs would affect more than 1,000 scientists and engineers across the agency — “the largest involuntary workforce reduction since the end of the Apollo program,” it said in a statement. It was not immediately clear how many were in Houston.

> The news also comes after NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro said members of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency had arrived at NASA and would be reviewing the agency’s contracts to find efficiencies, according to NASAWatch.com.

> Some of the workers expecting to be fired were new federal employees but not new to NASA — they had previously worked for NASA contractors and recently moved over, often for being a top performer or hoping to be promoted to mid- or upper management, according to the two sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the layoffs.

> READER CALLOUT: Have you been affected by layoffs at NASA? Share your story here.

> The American Federation of Government Employees, a union for federal workers, has condemned the broader government firings.

> “This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement over the weekend.

> Employees on probationary status haven’t had all their civil service protections kick in, which makes them easier to fire.

> “The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment,” an OPM spokesperson said last week.

I wish the media would stop calling these “layoffs” those are a private sector tactic that the public sector does not do. These are illegal firings. Probational employees have less protections than tenure, but they still need a reason for being fired. Usually **documented** disciplinary reasons. This admin has been saying every single probationary employee is being fired for not meeting standards. That is an illegal firing, not “layoffs”

My father works for NASA- he had coworkers who were planning to retire take Elon’s fork in the road offer. Everyone else is told to RTO full time, but there’s not enough office space for everyone. So. We’ll see. 

Private sector is fundamentally different from Public. Private companies are allowed to fail and most fail. All the time. Our federal government is not supposed to be risky. Anyone saying that it’s good to run a government like a business knows nothing about business and nothing about government.

Right when an asteroid is 7 years from hitting us, nice