Hundreds of federal employees who were let off during Elon Musk’s cost-cutting campaign are being invited to return to work.
The General Services Administration has given the employees who oversee federal workplaces until the end of the week to accept or deny reinstatement, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press. Those who accept must report for duty on Oct. 6 following a seven-month paid vacation during which the GSA incurred exorbitant fees — passed on to taxpayers — to stay in hundreds of properties whose leases it had scheduled to terminate or let to expire.
According to Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate officer, “the agency was left broken and understaffed as a result.” “They lacked the personnel required to perform essential tasks.”
GSA has been in “triage mode” for months, according to Becker, who works with Arco Real Estate Solutions and represents owners with government leases. He said that Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency had gone too far, too quickly, as seen by the abrupt reversal of the reduction.
Rehiring federal workers who have been purged
In order to consolidate the procurement and administration of thousands of federal workplaces, GSA was founded in the 1940s. Its request to return to work reflects rehiring initiatives at other DOGE-targeted agencies. The IRS said last month that it will permit certain workers to stay on the payroll after accepting a resignation offer. Some employees who took buyouts have also been brought back by the Labor Department, while many purged employees were already returned by the National Park Service.
Many of the buildings are managed by the GSA, which is essential to the operation of these organizations. As part of initiatives that urged them to quit or retire early, thousands of GSA workers began to leave the agency in March. In a concerted effort to cut the size of the federal workforce, hundreds of others—those covered by the recall notice—were let go. Despite their failure to report for duty, some of those workers are nevertheless paid.
Detailed inquiries concerning the return-to-work notification that GSA released on Friday were not answered by agency staff. The agency’s headcount, personnel choices, and the possible cost overruns resulting from reconsidering its intentions to terminate leases were also subjects of their refusal to comment.
“In the best interest of the customer agencies we serve and the American taxpayers, GSA’s leadership team has reviewed workforce actions and is making adjustments,” a press release from the agency stated.
The Trump administration has come under fire from Democrats for its indiscriminate approach to cutting jobs and costs. There’s no proof that cuts at GSA “delivered any savings,” Arizona Representative Greg Stanton, the top Democrat on the panel that oversees the agency, told AP.
“It has undermined the very services that taxpayers rely on and caused costly confusion,” he stated.
DOGE identified the agency, which employed over 12,000 people at the beginning of the Trump administration, as the primary focus of its initiative to cut down on federal government fraud, waste, and abuse.
Almost half of the 7,500 leases in the federal portfolio were to be unexpectedly cancelled by a small group of Musk’s trusted staffers who were implanted at GSA’s headquarters, occasionally sleeping on cots on the sixth level of the agency. In order to save billions of dollars, DOGE also requested GSA to sell hundreds of buildings that were held by the federal government.
More than 800 lease cancellation notifications were first sent by GSA to landlords, sometimes without notifying the federal tenants. Additionally, the agency released a list of hundreds of federal buildings that were specifically targeted for sale.
DOGE’s big layoffs resulted in minimal savings
The dumping of GSA’s portfolio was quickly criticized, and both efforts have been scaled back. More than 480 leases that DOGE had planned to terminate have been saved instead. Organizations like the Food and Drug Administration, Social Security Administration, and IRS have offices all throughout the nation, and the leases were for those offices.
By the end of July, DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts,” which originally bragged that the lease cancellations alone would save around $460 million, had dropped that estimate to $140 million, according to Becker, the former GSA real estate administrator.
GSA started making drastic employment cutbacks in the meantime. According to a federal official briefed on the matter, the administration cut 69 percent of GSA’s headquarters employees, 65 percent of its portfolio managers, and 35 percent of its facilities managers. The numbers were given by the official, who was under no authority to speak to the media, under the stipulation of anonymity.
The official claimed that because to the domestic unrest, 131 leases ended without the government truly leaving the premises. Due to the property owners’ inability to sell out those premises to other tenants, the agencies have been subject to exorbitant costs.
Soon, the public could have a better understanding of what happened at the agency.
The Government Accountability Office, an independent congressional watchdog, is investigating the GSA’s staff management, lease terminations, and scheduled facility disposals and plans to release conclusions in the coming months, according to David Marroni, a senior GAO official.
