The impacts of federal jobs cuts are being felt in our Central Florida communities. Even with the uncertainty over whether the firings are legal, people are losing their jobs by the thousands under the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. About 80% of the federal civilian workforce is outside of Washington D.C. They’re workers like Doug Jackson, a U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq War living in Orlando. He applied to work at the IRS in May of last year. After successfully going through months of onboarding and completing the hiring process, he was just five weeks into his public affairs job at the IRS when he was fired at the end of February. Jackson was technically a probationary employee because he had transferred to a new agency in a new position. But before his time at the IRS, he already had more than three years of experience as a federal contractor. Prior to that, he worked for NASA for 4 years. Doug Jackson joins Engage in studio to talk about the misconceptions he thinks people have about probationary federal employees losing their jobs right now.
Peyton Perry is 17 years into her career at FCC Coleman. The Federal Correctional Complex that houses inmates near Wildwood is one of Sumter County’s largest employers. Perry is a contract specialist there and member of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 506 union who travels to D.C. as a legislative coordinator to meet with lawmakers. She joins Engage to discuss her concerns that federal DOGE job cuts could create an unsafe atmosphere for inmates, employees, and the surrounding Central Florida community. She begins our conversation by describing the email she received last week requiring federal employees to justify their job.