← Business Daily
Business Daily
Life after DOGE
00:17:29
One year into his second term, has Donald Trump been championing the American worker?
Loading summary
Transcript53 lines
- [00:00]
A
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buyers. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn Ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com Broadcast. That's LinkedIn.com Broadcast. Terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Schwab at Schwab. How you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. This is Business daily from the BBC World Service. Today, 12 months into Donald Trump's second term and as US president, we're taking a look at what it's meant for the workforce.
- [01:30]
B
I've lost my job. I cannot find a new job. I can't go back to school because there's no federal funding. I think that this has been a merry go round for US federal workers.
- [01:40]
A
It has been a year of cuts, sackings and Elon Musk's now disbanded Doge Group. Some sections of the workforce have felt their rights under attack.
- [01:51]
C
It's not a matter of do they have less rights. The rights are there. The problem is when they exercise those rights, are they going to be protected?
- [02:01]
A
But has the past year also provided opportunities for those switching to the private.
- [02:06]
D
Sector when the federal government reduces its employment? If a lot of high skilled workers are now shifted to the private sector, that can be good for the economy.
- [02:16]
A
How is the future looking for workers in the us? That's Business Daily from the BBC. We're cutting down the size of government. We have to. We're bloated, we're sloppy. We have a lot of people that.
- [02:31]
B
Aren'T doing their job.
- [02:32]
A
We have a lot of people that don't exist. On returning to office 12 months ago, Donald Trump wasted no time in delivering on campaign pledges to root out what he saw as waste and even fraud within the heart of government. He called it draining the swamp. At his very first cabinet meeting, he stood side by side with tech billionaire and high profile supporter Elon Musk, whose job it was to wield the axe at the head of the new cost cutting agency, the Department of Government Efficiency.
- [03:03]
B
Doge we wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well. But if the job is not essential or they're not doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the public payroll.
- [03:17]
A
Federal workers were asked to demonstrate why their work was necessary. And even when they did, some were sacked. Andrew Lennox from Michigan was a US Marines war veteran who'd served during the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. He'd subsequently joined the government agency which supports other veterans, the Department of Veteran Affairs. That was until he received an email back in February last year which read, based on your performance, you haven't demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest.
- [03:51]
B
I was like, oh, my God, I got fired. Nobody knew that this was coming. And that night, I think it was around 1400 Department of Veterans affairs employees were fired. We were nervous with Trump coming in because obviously they're talking about, you know, draining the swamp and federal agencies are going to be affected, but, you know, it's the Department of Veterans affairs. You'd think, like, that's one of the things that they probably don't want to mess with.
- [04:17]
A
After a very public campaign in the media and a lengthy legal battle, Andrew and many others in the Department of Veterans affairs were finally reinstated.
- [04:26]
B
I got a call from our guy in HR that said, you can have your job back, but you can't come in right now. So they were paying us to sit at home. And then finally they said, actually, you can come back into work. Everything's cool now, we're good. So I got my job back and they had to pay all of us the back pay for all of the time that we were terminated. And the only people that suffered were the American veterans, federal employees, and the taxpayers.
- [04:53]
A
Federal worker Mark Cohn from Colorado took a different path. He was facing the sack as a park ranger and fearing that it was inevitable, he took a payoff. Jumping before he was pushed, you might say.
- [05:06]
B
I was on vacation with my family and I got a call from my supervisor telling me, don't freak out, but I don't know if you're going to have a job anymore. I just remember breaking down and crying. And I was told that my position would probably be compromised first and that I would be one of the first on the chopping block to go. And so when the Department of Government Efficiency Doge came out and said, well, we have this deferred resignation program. We'll pay you until September if you just agree to leave. So I took it.
- [05:33]
A
But for Mark, the challenge of finding a new job after leaving federal Service hasn't proved straightforward.
- [05:39]
B
I've applied to over 200 different places and I think I've had like five to seven interviews. We had some protections. I'll always be very thankful for the American Federal workers union, but when it comes from the very top, there was zero support from them. They sowed confusion and anxiety into all of us and it was exactly what they wanted. It was a terrible time to work there.
- [06:06]
A
To this day, despite 200 applications, Mark is still to secure another permanent position. And even for the federal workers who remain, many have found themselves demonised. Russell Vogt, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, spoke of how government workers should now feel traumatized because he said the axe was about to fall.
- [06:30]
E
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected when they wake up in the morning. We want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly.
- [06:41]
A
Viewed as the villains, and many felt that way in what proved to be a turbulent year. This was the view of Judy. It's not her real name. She's still employed within a major government department and she asked us not to reveal her identity for fear of official recrimination.
- [06:58]
C
We heard that there were going to be significant reductions in force. There wasn't really information about who would lose their job, when they would lose their job, how much notice they would be given, if they would be given notice, how, how any of that would roll out. It was just sort of like a looming possibility that you could lose your job at any moment. So, yes, people were let go. Many of those people were brought back. Somebody would get let go, come back, get let go again. It was just a constant back and forth. Our protections are very much diminished, like in a very real sense. Right. I mean, our union contract rights were terminated a few months ago. So a lot of our ability to bargain about working conditions or different things, things of that nature just is pretty much non existent. And also your ability to be able to defend your job if you are kind of disciplined is also reduced. That's one way in which we've lost protections. I feel like it's too important to just Give up. Right. And I think that there's lots of aspects of public service that do have like a real value in society. And I think just people have different ideas about what that looks like.
- [08:07]
A
According to figures just released by the government, around 335,000 federal workers left the payroll between January and November last year, with a large majority of them either quitting or retiring. Only 11,000 or so were actually fired. Chris Edwards is an economist at the Cato Institute in Washington.
- [08:27]
D
Trump, through layoffs and buyouts and firings, reduced the federal workforce by about 9%. However, if the purpose was to cut federal government spending and the federal government deficit, it hardly made a dent. And that's because only about 10% of federal government spending of 7 trillion a year is made up of worker compensation. The vast majority, what the federal government does in the United States is just basically a giant transfer machine. Trillions of dollars a year going to state and local governments. The employment is not very large relative to the states. So Trump cut federal employment from about 3 million to 2.7 million, but state government employment is 17 million.
- [09:19]
A
I suppose this all happens at a time of flat or even rising unemployment across the US at large. I mean, the private sector is not creating jobs as it has done in the past. Would that be fair to say?
- [09:37]
D
That's true. Although unemployment remains, you know, low, certainly compared to most European countries. The American economy is remarkably vigorous given all the sort of anti market actions of the Trump administration and before that, frankly the Biden administration. And arguably, you know, when the federal government reduces its employment, sometimes that can be good for the economy. If a lot of high skill workers, which the federal government has, are now shifted to the private sector, that can be good for the economy. And an example of that is in the 1990s, after the cold War ended, there is a vast movement of highly skilled federal workers who used to do military and defense activities went into the private sector in the United States. And that was one of the causes, in my view, of the high tech boom in the United states in the 1990s. So, you know, if you take skilled workers who are doing less efficient thing in the government sector and move them to the private sector, that can't be good for the economy.
- [10:38]
A
Figures suggest that with all the redundancy payouts, the government actually ended up spending 3% more on employee payments last year than it did the year before. We've asked the White House for comment on all of this, but according to Kevin Madden, a former Republican strategist and now a political analyst, the Doge initiative is still viewed favorably by many Republicans.
- [11:01]
E
The reason Doge had a lot of political support was it represented like the first big comprehensive effort to remake the federal bureaucracy in a way that would shrink it, that would stop spending money on wasteful programs and redirect any federal spending away from the big programs in service of a leftist woke ideology. There have been many inside Republican policy circles and conservative think tanks who have just relished the idea of finally confronting the federal bureaucracy.
- [11:39]
A
So looking back at Doge, do you think now it's regarded as a success?
- [11:45]
E
I think there are a lot of mixed views on it. There are many people who feel that it finally exposed a lot of the inefficiencies in government, a lot of the fraud, waste and abuse that was going on. Many of the folks who believe that Doge was a success would point to the new scrutiny that state governments are getting and that blue states are getting about how they spent federal dollars. And so exposing that has at least created a conversation where a new policy debate can prosper. And it's one that they feel that is an important debate. And it's one that they feel has worked to their advantage with many voters.
- [12:23]
A
Former Republican strategist Kevin Madden, you're listening to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.
- [12:31]
B
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extinct, extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
- [12:52]
C
50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See Terms. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [13:34]
A
I'm Ed Butler and today I'm looking at the legacy and impact of President Trump's public sector cuts and the wider impact on workers rights. In the us, several departments, including those of Education, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, have lost more than a quarter of their staff. Organisations designed to uphold and represent workers and their rights also came under attack. Jenny Abruzzo headed the Department of National Labour Relations as its general counsel until she too was sacked in January last year. Now working as a consultant and an advisor to a major union, she's concerned about the impact the DOGE cuts had on workers rights generally.
- [14:15]
C
It's an intentional attempt to just strip workers of their rights and to elevate corporate interests over protecting workers rights in this country.
- [14:26]
A
Ok, well, that's the attempt, but has it actually worked? Do workers enjoy fewer rights now than they did a year ago?
- [14:33]
C
The rights are there. The problem is, when they exercise those rights, are they going to be protected? And you know, whether that's free speech rights or free assembly rights, or the rights to organize and collectively bargain, workers have those rights and they cannot be retaliated against for engaging in those rights. But I do think that there is strength in numbers and we need to be using all workers, need to be using our collective power to effectuate change in this current climate, which certainly is elevating corporate interests above workers rights and elevating corporate billionaires voices at the same time that it's seeking to diminish ours. Jenny Abruzzo he's keeping his promises to the American worker. He is the president of the American worker.
- [15:19]
B
It's time to reclaim our heritage as.
- [15:21]
A
A nation of builders.
- [15:23]
E
When Americans see a beautiful bridge or.
- [15:26]
A
A beautiful building, as this promotional video shows, the Trump administration has long cast itself as the champion of the American worker. The reduction of the federal workforce hasn't necessarily eroded that view among its supporters, but a rising unemployment rate just might. The President remains bullish about prospects for American workers, offering TV viewers in December a positive spin on the current reality. There are more people working today than at any time in American history. And 100% of all jobs created since.
- [16:00]
E
I took office have been in the.
- [16:02]
A
Private sector rather than government, which is the only way to make a country powerful and great. But the president's claims don't necessarily match all the government's own data. Latest job figures show the unemployment rate is standing at 4.4%. That's up on the previous year, with relatively few new jobs being created. Even Republicans like Kevin Madden accept that the wider turmoil in the economy could make the 2025 Trump offensive on the federal payroll look like something of a.
- [16:36]
E
Sideshow he knows that a big part of his base is the working class American who feels left behind by those who have prospered in a changing economy, prospered in a service economy, and that he wanted to right size the focus of the federal government and right size American policies to be more grounded and connected with those voters. Right now what voters really want is a sense of economic security, a sense that the job they have, they're going to make more money in it than they did last year and that they're going to feel that there's a sense of security and that they can afford all the staples of life, housing, health care, education, and some of the concerns about inflation and affordability, higher prices, those still persist. Some of the concerns about job security. There is a sense of economic trepidation coursing through the American electorate right now.
- [17:32]
A
And so worker security is going to be crucial to the next 12 months and indeed run up to the midterm elections.
- [17:39]
E
Worker security, worker prosperity, being able to again just manage a better life than the one that the generation before you had. Those are the fundamentals really of any election. And I think 2026 affordability concerns were very real. People thinking that the country was, quote, headed in the right direction. Some of that is trending downwards. And I think those are bipartisan concerns that a lot of folks who are deciding to put their name on the ballot are going to have to confront directly by November of 2026.
- [18:12]
A
Kevin Madden for many of those laid off federal workers, finding a job in this economy has not proved easy. The latest job figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that more workers are remaining in long term unemployment now, suggesting there are often difficulties re entering the job market. Others who remain on the payroll say that staying in a workplace when millions of those who you now serve believe you to be either lazy or crooked has also been hard. The future for them seems much less clear now.
- [18:44]
B
Why I joined the Marine Corps and why I love the United States is like the idea of truth and justice. I know it's idealistic and it's not always the reality, but like now we're just embracing the absolute worst part of, you know, humanity right now.
- [18:58]
C
Honestly, it's, it's one of those things where you just never really know what's coming down the pipeline and you know, you just kind of keep hoping that the next day will be okay. Right? But that's, that's kind of how it is right now.
- [19:11]
B
I've lost my job. I cannot find a new job. I can't go back to school because there's no federal funding. I think that this has been a merry go round of just hoping for better, and I want the president to do better and I want the government to work the way that it needs to work. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.
- [19:31]
A
The thoughts there of three federal employees, Andrew Lennox, Judy and Mark Cohen, ending this edition of Business daily. My name's Ed Butler. The producer today was Craig Henderson. Take care.
- [19:51]
B
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now. You call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
- [20:11]
C
50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms.