EPA Union Sees Risk to Environmental Justice Jobs as Morale Dips

The EPA’s biggest union expects the Trump administration to put hundreds of employees on administrative leave because they work on environmental justice issues, in addition to the three staffers already in that category.

The change is likely to be spurred by recent guidance from President Donald Trump’s administration stating that diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs—which Trump is seeking to end by executive order—includes environmental justice, Marie Owens Powell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, told reporters on Friday.

Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, his administration has moved swiftly to overhaul the federal bureaucracy through executive orders and guidance to the agencies from the US Office of Personnel Management.

One example of work paused by the EPA is environmental justice screenings for enforcement purposes, Owens Powell said.

“It was a way to check and balance ourselves to ensure that we were doing inspections and enforcement equally, where we should be doing it,” she said. “That has been stopped.”

Environmental Protection Agency employees are being told by their superiors not to complete forms that include environmental justice questions, Owens Powell said. If staffers do mention that a given activity is happening in a poor community, other employees are being encouraged to report “that so-and-so broke the rule,” she said.

Three EPA employees have already been put on administrative leave because they were in DEI positions, Owens Powell said.

The agency’s Office of Inclusive Excellence, which focused on equitable outcomes and inclusion, has been disbanded and the website is not currently active.

Broadly, morale at the EPA is “probably the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Owens Powell. “I’ve never seen, literally every day, folks are afraid to turn their computers on. They don’t know what message will be coming out next.”

For now, AFGE is telling employees to download their personnel files, because they immediately lose access to that information when they are put on administrative leave, and to “put your head down, get the job done,” Owens Powell said.

Yet the Office of Personnel Management’s recent offer for federal workers to resign, which expires Feb. 6, and keep their pay and benefits through the end of September, has “made people angry” and even more determined to stay in their jobs, she said.

Newly-confirmed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in his Senate confirmation hearing that he was “not coming into this position with any threat” to shrink the size of the EPA staff. “My desire is to increase productivity,” he said.

Less than an hour before the Senate voted to confirm him Wednesday, acting EPA head James Payne sent an email to agency staff saying the agency “will honor OPM’s offer of deferred resignations for all employees who wish to accept this offer.”

An agency spokesperson said in an email Friday that “EPA is working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders as well as subsequent associated implementation memos”

“On Administrator Zeldin’s first day in the office, he met with tons of career staff throughout EPA’s headquarters spanning two city blocks in downtown D.C. and took to heart their advice as we work together to advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” the spokesperson said.

More than 1,000 new members have signed up for the union in the last week, Owens Powell said.

Separately, hundreds of EPA grantees have been locked out of the grants system, unable to do their work or process payroll or invoices, because of the recent freeze on federal funding, Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network and a former special assistant in the EPA air office, said on the same call.

As of Wednesday, EPA employees began noticing their pronouns had been removed from their e-mail signatures, Owens Powell said.