The FDA has rehired at least some workers tasked with releasing public records generated by the agency’s regulatory activities, two employees said. The recall reverses firings carried out roughly a month ago by the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the agency.
Workers who process records about medical device and tobacco regulation under the Freedom of Information Act received notices from an FDA official May 1 that they were no longer being fired as part of the department’s mass layoffs, according to the employees and documents reviewed by KFF Health News, which agreed not to name the workers because they are not authorized to speak to the press and fear retaliation.
The workers were told to return to their jobs immediately.
As part of its plans to shrink HHS by 20,000 people, officials announced in late March that 10,000 employees would be laid off across the department, which includes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the FDA. More than one-third of the layoffs, 3,500, affected FDA staffers. Those firings gutted the FOIA divisions across HHS.
The layoffs decimated the workforce that processes FOIA requests across FDA centers overseeing vaccines, drugs, tobacco, medical devi …