Following severe workforce reductions that interfered with drug and food safety inspections, three FDA officials say the agency is finalizing plans to replace some of the workers it lay off with contractors.
“Recent adjustments in staff numbers have created a heightened need for the FDA to be nimble, efficient and respond creatively, in order to continue and maintain FDA’s regulatory inspection presence and the gold standard of excellence,” said officials from the agency.
According to two FDA officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the contractors would essentially take over the majority of the work performed by more than 50 government workers who were laid off and who managed travel arrangements and monitored expenditures for the agency’s inspectors. According to one email, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary authorized the plan.
The action seems to go against the information provided in layoff notices to employees of the FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations, which stated that their job was “unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency.”
The Department of Health and Human Services provided the same defense to thousands of other health agency employees who were let off last week due to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s massive budget cuts.
“It’s a waste,” one laid-off FDA official stated. “You already have employees who can come back, and can come in and make it run. But you’re going to get someone to come in, train them? There’s going to be delays. You’re going to delay the whole process of safeguarding the American public”
The number of additional FDA layoffs that may be replaced by contractors is unknown.
“The people who were doing the job were actually passionate about the job. The majority of our staff have been doing this for 10, 15, 20 years,” according to the officials.
Because of the severe losses of FDA support workers, agency officials were preparing to reduce routine inspections.
With the office completely destroyed, officials claimed that a number of procedures to guarantee that inspectors’ travel expenses were covered and to arrange intricate logistics, such as visas to visit other nations, had come to a standstill. One official claimed that all of their preparations for the international inspections had essentially come to a halt.
“Once we were let go, everything stopped, because there was no one else to take over the job,” the official stated.
The FDA would provide the contractors with laptops and badges so they could carry out their work, which is said to be “to address the duties that have been performed” by the employees who were laid off.
But the contractual records also state that the work may be done online, implying that the stringent return-to-office rules that have plagued FDA staff for weeks would not apply to them.
Source: CBS News
