The Food and Drug Administration is finalizing plans to replace some of the employees it laid off with contractors, three FDA officials tell CBS News, after steep cuts to the agency’s workforce disrupted drug and food safety inspections.
“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,” agency officials wrote, in emails and draft contracting documents obtained by CBS News.
The contractors would effectively replace most of the work done by more than 50 laid-off federal employees who handled travel logistics and conducted oversight on spending for the agency’s inspectors, said two FDA officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The plan was approved by FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, one email said.
The move appears to contradict what laid-off workers supporting FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations had been told in their layoff notices: that they were being let go because their work was “unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency.”
Thousands of other health agency workers who were laid off last week by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sweeping cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services received the same justification from the department.
“It’s a waste,” one laid-off FDA official said. “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”
It is unclear how many other laid-off FDA employees might be replaced with contractors. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“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,” the official said.
CBS News previously reported that agency officials were planning for cutbacks to routine inspections, as a result of the steep layoffs to the FDA’s support staff.
With the office gutted, officials said that a range of processes to ensure that travel was paid for and secure complex logistics for inspectors, like visas to enter foreign countries, had stalled. All their work to prepare for foreign inspections has effectively ended, one official said.
“Once we were let go, everything stopped, because there was no one else to take over the job,” the official said.
The draft documents and emails obtained by CBS News say that the contractors would be given FDA laptops and badges to do their work, which is described as intended “to address the duties that have been performed” by the laid-off staff.
However, the contracting documents also say that the tasks could be completed virtually, suggesting that they would not be subject to the same strict return-to-office requirements that have hamstrung FDA employees for weeks.
