Terminated employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have been brought back to work in response to a judge’s order — sort of.
Probationary employees (a class of government workers who are newer to an agency or role) received letters over the weekend notifying them that they were reinstated into their positions, following a court order requiring the CFPB and 17 other agencies to restore such employees. The CFPB terminated 117 probationary employees between February 11th and 13th, and reinstated them as of Monday afternoon, according to a recent court filing from the agency’s acting chief human capital officer Adam Martinez. But all those workers were “immediately placed on administrative leave status while the CFPB continues to act to comply with the TRO [temporary restraining order] and/or employees are to be assigned work by management/supervisors,” Martinez wrote. Across agencies, nearly 25,000 total probationary employees had been fired and are being…