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Public health employees and contractors who lost their jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gathered at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Friday to put a face on the mass terminations and demand that state officials speak up for them with the Trump administration.
The federal agency laid off hundreds of workers last week. The CDC had employed about 13,000 people, with 10,000 in Georgia.
Many of those terminated were longtime contractors who had recently been hired directly by the agency, making them vulnerable as probationary.
Dozens of workers and supporters gathered at the Capitol to tell their stories, many holding signs with slogans like “CDC saves lives,” “Science not silence,” and “Never again! Thank you CDC for preventing this,” a reference to polio.
Sonya Arundar said she received an email Saturday evening saying she was being let go from her job as a health communicator at the Public Health Infrastructure Center.
Prior to being hired as a full-time employee on Dec. 1, she’d been a contractor at the CDC for almost 20 years.
“I understand wanting to cut government waste, wanting to save money, but this isn’t the way to do it,” Arundar said. She said the “across the board cuts” had caused chaos and confusion.
A communication pause ordered by the Trump administration had caused a slowdown in work at the agency prior to the layoffs, Arundar said.
The CDC had paused publishing some reports, guidance for doctors and health officials, and data.
“We weren’t able to communicate with the public, with our public health partners, and so we were pretty much at a standstill,” Arundar said.
Emaad Hassan said he was laid off last week, even though he was not on the probation list. In his job at the CDC’s Global Health Center, he responded to Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic – work he described as “the risk of my life.”
Hassan said he wants to be reinstated.
”There are proper procedures in place. I would like for the administration to take those proper procedures and go through a proper reduction in force,” Hassan said. “It’s a slippery slope. If you’re not going to abide the law, then everything is up for grabs.”
Ann Malarcher owns a small contracting business called Epipolware. Her 10 years of contract work with the CDC abruptly ended via email on Feb. 14, she said. Malarcher employed one other person for work related to the CDC’s Tobacco Control Program, including a tobacco quit line.
“There are hundreds and hundreds of contractors in Georgia that have also been cut. And we haven’t heard a word from our governor about helping people find other jobs,” Malarcher said. “They have to step up and communicate to President [Donald] Trump and Elon Musk that these cuts were chaotic.”
Malarcher said she believes the government should be efficient, but the cuts carried out by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency need to be done more carefully.
“It should have been done with thoughtful concern, considered reasoning … They need to consult people who know these public health programs,” Malarcher said.
State Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta, organized Friday’s press conference. She said she represents many federal employees and called on Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones to respond to the CDC layoffs.
“There are statewide leaders here in Georgia … that have red lines of communication and personal relationships with the current administration,” Draper said. “What we are asking them to do is put partisanship aside, put politics aside, and maybe even set their fears aside, and stand up and speak out for the Georgians that need their support right now.”
Gov. Brian Kemp addressed the layoffs during a session with Politico at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
“I know they have some layoffs at the CDC and other things, but you know, government can stand a little rightsizing,” Kemp said.
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.
