Facing a backlog of school discrimination cases, the U.S. Department of Education has asked hundreds of employees it fired months ago to temporarily return to work.

A Dec. 5 email obtained by USA TODAY shows the agency ordered a significant portion of staffers in the Office for Civil Rights to come back later this month. In the “return to duty” directive, officials acknowledged they’re facing a sizable caseload of civil rights complaints, and they underscored a need to utilize every resource at the government’s disposal to work through them.

The agency said the request applies to roughly 250 workers who’ve been on administrative leave for months amid legal challenges to their March firings. Julie Hartman, the Education Department’s press secretary for legal affairs, stressed there still aren’t any plans to fully rehire those workers permanently.

  • Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    These people are fucking morons. Between the lawsuit losses and rebuilding the organization, they will have saved approximately negative bajillion dollars.

    • Bakkoda@lemmy.zip
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      I can assure you the United States government isn’t in the business of saving money and especially a currently GOP controlled fart box called the white house. The United States is being strip mined. Sold off for parts. We spent the last 30 years starving the beast and now it’s time to kill it and carve it up.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      Yes, of taxpayer money. But they’ve funneled quite a lot into private pockets.

  • johsny@lemmy.world
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    And I’m sitting here in a third world “shithole” country, looking at all this and shaking my head.

    • PlaidBaron@lemmy.world
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      Which country? I live in Canada and have had angry Americans explain that we live in a socialist hellhole with no rights and a poor quality of life.

      Which was an interesting take since Ive lived in both countries and my life here is way the fuck better than it was down there.

      They live in a delusion down there.

      • Which was an interesting take since Ive lived in both countries and my life here is way the fuck better than it was down there

        Can also confirm. I lived in the US for ~25 years before moving, Canada is so much better. Though I do think we could be even more of a “socialist hellhole” up here

        • Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca
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          It’s a big country friend! We’re all over the place for weather!

          While true we do have a reputation as a frozen wasteland, we have all sorts of weather! For instance in the Maritimes you can get a frozen wet wasteland with the occasional hurricane! The prairie provinces are frozen windy wastelands! And the perennial favorite of BC is a dreary wet wasteland!

          Still wouldn’t want to live anywhere else though.

          • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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            22 hours ago

            I grew up in Cleveland, on Lake Erie, directly across from Toronto, so I am very familiar with that brand of weather. Years ago I moved to Florida, which was amazing until the MAGAs fucked it up. It’s still beautiful, but a lot of the people, and the entire state government, suck.

        • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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          23 hours ago

          The short days in winter. Get up in the dark, watch the beautiful six hours of sunlight through a grimy office window, go home in the dark, damp, cold soggy rainy windy weather that passes for winter these days.

  • D_C@sh.itjust.works
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    “…shows the agency ordered a significant portion of staffers in the Office for Civil Rights to come back…”

    Sorry, I’m too busy telling you to FUCK OFF. Maybe I’ll be free in about 6 months? Until then, FUCK OFF

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      You’re ORDERING me to come back to help you fight the people who are suing you for your egregious abuses?

      I will return for quadruple the salary, and a 50% pension with 100% paid health care that starts immediately after I leave for ANY reason. I will have a 4 day work week, and I will do it from home. Any Zoom meetings require 24 hours notice.

      I could think of about 100 more conditions, and if they violate ANY of them, or fire me for any reason, I quit immediately, and my pension rises to 100%, and it starts immediately.

      No negotiation. Agree to EVERYTHING, or the answer is No.

      And then when they agreed, I’d take the job, and then tank it so badly that they’d have to fire me, because keeping me would be more damaging than paying a lifetime salary and benefits.

      The Secretary of Education and the MAGA government is determined to eliminate the Department of Education, so I’d have no problem with sabotaging the agency that they are determined to destroy anyway. I just won’t destroy it in the ways they want me to.

      • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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        Yup. Get all that in writing and then insist they pay you in CASH. DAILY. I would beyond doing anything on “trust.”

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          I like the daily cash strategy. Maybe take the Chuck Berry/ Aretha Franklin strategy, and insist on it up front, BEFORE you perform. I have no faith that those criminals will honor their obligations. They are notoriously untrustworthy, so they must pay in advance.

  • Neon_Carnivore@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    DoE: “Our case load has become too much to handle. We need you to come back to work, but we don’t want to actually give your jobs back.”

    The fired workers: “Go fuck yourself.”

    Hopefully.

    • Ininewcrow@piefed.ca
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      Or better yet …

      Fired workers: … sure, I’ll come back on one condition … you give me four times the rate of pay I had before … then when your stupid backlog is taken care of … you can go fuck yourself.

      … oh you don’t want to pay four times the rate? … no problem … go fuck yourself.

    • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      No one with a better option is coming back and waiting tables is more lucrative than teaching. If anyone comes to the departments aid it will be the dregs.

    • MyBrainHurts@piefed.ca
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      Probably a pretty rough spot for those employees. I imagine their pensions, health benefits and retirement stuff hinges on the definition of administrative leave etc.

      If you were one of the employees on admin leave with a sick kid dependent on that healthcare plan… How big a risk would you make your kid take for you?

      • regedit@lemmy.zip
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        HOAs make my fucking blood boil and I don’t even live with one. The whole idea that some fuck stick with a house near you could tell you how to keep your property, and it’s legal, is absolutely bonkers to me!

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          Yet another bog standard, widespread, common feature of US society that is just obviously a scam, that everyone hates, yet nothing ever changes, even though HOAs fairly often get actually outed and prosecuted for fraud.

          We are a nation of morons, in love with narcissists, confused as to why they keep abusing us.

      • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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        It says they are on administrative leave. So they do technically still work there is some quasi state. I assume the order would force them to come back or quit. Which is probably the point.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          They’ve been out since March.

          Either their package was paid or why would you trust them to pay out of they haven’t already.

  • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
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    1 Fire all the people in the Office of Civil Rights.

    2 Deploy a bunch of ICE assholes to violate civil rights.

    3 Receive record number of complaints

    4 Rehire fired people.

    5 Clear caseload.

    6 Repeat step 1

    7 ???

    8 Profit.

  • Lucky_777@lemmy.world
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    This admin has been on point with these headlines. They fire a shit ton and say…oh shit, we fucked up. Total incompetence

  • PK2@lemmy.world
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    Damn, they need a ton of people to rubber stamp “Denied, no discrimination here!” on things.

    Cause you know that’s all they want them to do.

      • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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        This is the answer.

        I’d come back, but I’m charging 4x my old wage, I get back-pay to my furlough date at my new rate. I’m also signed for 25 years, with yearly adjustments for inflation, and if I’m termed for any reason, I keep my pay package.

    • nieminen@lemmy.world
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      Oh all the decisions… Why that one?

      In all seriousness though, I suspect maybe it’s what all stupidly rich, old corrupt white women look like?