Thousands of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees across the country were fired on Tuesday as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce to cut cost.
According to the Washington Post, fired employees were told to contact Anita Pinder with discrimination complaints. But Pinder, who was the director at the Office of Equal Opportunity & Civil Rights at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, died last year.
In a reduction in force notice reviewed by the Post, HHS officials listed Pinder’s email address and phone number and encouraged fired CMS staffers to contact her within 45 days with their discrimination complaints.
“If you believe this personnel action is based in whole or in part on discrimination based on your race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability, or in retaliation for prior protected activity you may file an EEO complaint with your designated HHS EEO representative,” the notice reads.
The inclusion of Pinder’s name was a gut punch to employees who knew her, said Karen Shields, who worked with Pinder.
“They couldn’t have run it past the people at CMS that were at the funeral and knew she died,” Shields said. “This is a lack of communication. There is just a better way to do this.”
Pinder’s was not the only incorrect information listed on the notices. In the communications office at the Food and Drug Administration, notices instructed fired employees to contact a staffer at the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office if they believed their firing was inappropriate.
But the person whose name, email and phone number was listed as the EEO contact had left the agency nearly a month before, according to messages obtained by The Post.
