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By Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -National Science Foundation administrators reclassified hundreds of employees from permanent to probationary status in violation of labor contracts, according to a U.S. lawmaker and an employee at the NSF, a U.S. federal agency that funds science research.
The agency made the change after President Donald Trump took office on January 20 with a sweeping directive aimed at reducing the federal workforce, they said. On that day, the Office of Personnel Management required federal agencies to submit a list of employees who were on probation.
The reclassification exposes these employees to termination without due process, said U.S. Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat who represents the northern Virginia district where NSF is headquartered.
Beyer said in a letter on Thursday that in response to the OPM directive, NSF unilaterally stripped permanent status from both union and non-union workers, including executives, without notification. The only sign of the change was a form added to the individuals' personnel files.
An NSF employee with knowledge of the process could confirm only that a "significant number" of employees were affected. The source spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
"I write to express deep concern and outrage over the National Science Foundation's recent firing of NSF employees and the reclassification of hundreds of employees' employment status from permanent to a probationary status," Beyer wrote in a letter to NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan.
The NSF on Tuesday fired 170 people, 86 of whom were classified as probationary and 84 as experts, whose appointments are defined as one year or less, spokesperson Mike England said on Friday. The firings constituted nearly 10% of the agency's 1,715-person workforce, he said.
England said NSF had received Beyer's letter and was working on a response.
The National Science Foundation funds science and engineering research across the country, on topics from supercomputers to battling pandemics, its website says. It receives 40,000 proposals a year and funds about 11,000.
"It is absurd to mindlessly decimate the workforce that has led the world in science over the past 75 years, and to willingly give up excellent scientists and talent," Beyer wrote.
He asked the NSF to reinstate terminated employees and rescind unlawful reclassification of permanent employees.
To comply with other White House directives, including on diversity, gender and climate, NSF staff are rifling through thousands of individual grants, according to Beyer and the employee.
Beyer said this month that NSF employees were given a list of words - including women, female, Black and indigenous - to flag in grants for possible termination.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are taking steps to be sure their language follows similar policies in compliance with Trump's executive orders.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Franklin Paul and Cynthia Osterman)
