Hundreds of federal workers apply for unemployment in Washington state amid Trump's purge

Amid a surge of federal firings nationwide, 362 federal workers have applied for unemployment in Washington state between Jan. 20, when President Trump took office, and Tuesday, according to a report released on Friday by Washington’s Employment Security Department.

That's almost 200 more unemployment applications than had been submitted by this same time last year, a blog post from the department said.

The firings hit everywhere from the U.S. Forest Service to the Federal Transit Administration, and the impacts are not yet clear. But terminated employees who spoke to KUOW raised grave warnings about impacts to everything from wilderness search and rescue to transit agencies losing money.

At Bonneville Power Administration, which provides over half of Washington state’s electricity, a spokesperson confirmed media reports that hundreds of lineworkers and electricians were fired or had job offers revoked.

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Emily Conner, a grants management specialist for the Federal Transit Administration, was fired last week, along with a number of other grant managers. The terminations were made “with fabrications of poor performance, with no severance at all,” she said.

Conner said there are now only four grant managers left for the Pacific Northwest region, which includes not just Washington but Alaska, Idaho and Oregon. Transit agencies may not be able to get grants or potentially even get reimbursed for money they’ve already spent, Conner said. She worries about furloughs or layoffs from Seattle to Idaho to reservations of 70 Indigenous tribes in the Pacific Northwest.

“I really just don't know how people are going to be able to get the work done. We never had any time at FTA to sit idle in any way, shape, or form,” Conner said. “And I just don't think that there's going to be any way that the people left are going to be able to pick up all of the work that had to be dropped when this firing happened.”

The Federal Transit Administration did not respond to a request for comment. Sound Transit, which manages commuter trains, Link light rail, and inter-county bus service in the Seattle metropolitan area — and is perhaps the largest transit agency in the Pacific Northwest — declined to comment.

Gregg Bafundo, a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service until last Friday, said the reductions will mean far fewer search and rescue staff in federal wilderness lands like the Enchantments, and they will hurt wildfire season firefighting efforts. A Washington State Department of Natural Resources spokesperson confirmed they expect a smaller federal firefighting force fighting alongside them this year as well.

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A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, pointed out wildland firefighters are shielded from the layoffs, and maintained that the federal government will be able to respond to fires on federal land.

“We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” the spokesperson said in an email. “As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters. Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary (Inflation Reduction Act) funding.”

But Bafundo said that’s false, and wildland firefighters are only about half of who pitches in during a busy wildfire season.

“What the other half of the U.S. Forest Service is, is what we call ‘the militia,’” Bafundo told KUOW. “We take on firefighting duties as a second job. So when every single firefighter on the line is strapped…the militia takes over.”

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That’s everything from helping on the line to managing basecamps or doing security on abandoned homes. Last year, he said he and his partner, along with many people who he said are now fired, helped save the town of Naches from the Retreat Fire.

“There would’ve been no way to contain the Retreat Fire the way we contained it with just the professional firefighting force,” Bafundo said. “When you see a big fire happening, you see all those yellow dots on the hillside, marching up the hillside – for many of those yellow dots, firefighting is a secondary duty.”

Rep. Kim Schrier, a Democrat who represents a district straddling Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Park to Mt. Rainier, echoed those concerns.

“Some of the people that they're firing are people who do fire mitigation work. They thin our forest to prevent catastrophic wildfire,” Schrier said. “Some of them are the people who take the emergency calls. Some of them are the people who advise firefighters that weather conditions are changing or the fire is changing direction, in order to protect them.”

Republicans in the state legislature have largely taken a wait-and-see approach to these firings, but Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse, who represents Central Washington, expressed some concern this week via email.

“A strong, well trained federal workforce is essential, and I have communicated to the Trump Administration that there should be a more nuanced approach to terminations and furloughs,” a comment from Newhouse said. “I have concerns that the unintended consequences of these workforce reductions will have long-lasting implications at Hanford, (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), and (Bonneville Power Administration). While I agree that the federal workforce and related spending needs to be reduced, we must ensure that positions critical to public safety, energy, and research should be maintained.”

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, Washington’s only other Congressional Republican in Spokane, did not respond to KUOW's multiple requests for comment.

In an interview with Pullman-area radio station KQQQ on Wednesday, Baumgartner said he does have concerns that the Trump administration is not giving Congress a heads-up before it makes cuts, but supports “right-sizing government spending.”

“The White House is not letting us know before they take some of these actions," Baumgartner said. "We find out after the fact, and usually I find out from the folks who call my office who are ticked off about it. But … we're $37 trillion in debt. That's just not sustainable. It's a national security risk. It's not fair to our kids.”

Washington state's Employment Security Department wrote in a blog post that federal employees seeking new jobs can visit one of about 30 WorkSource offices around the state for help and referrals.

“My administration is standing at the ready to support all Washington workers – including federal government employees impacted by chaos in the federal government,” said Governor Bob Ferguson in the blog post. “We will help you get back on your feet.”