The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a small, six-person food distribution team that works directly with food banks across the Northeast to get food onto shelves, part of a program feeding low-income seniors. Half of them were fired earlier this month under cuts spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, a union leader told GBH News this week.
Ellen Mei, the union representative for the regional office, said the cuts are among 16 employees who lost their jobs cut at the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service , which serves Massachusetts and six other northeastern states from New York to Maine — about 15% of the office’s staff.
She worries that means the amount and the quality of the food will be hit.
“And of course, the food banks don’t have enough food, then less people are going to get fed,” Mei said.
Federal workers and outside advocates worry that eliminating staff will lead to service delays and less oversight of programs that feed people, from food banks to nutritional support for infants and the elderly. The regional office administers more than a dozen different nutrition assistance programs, including school lunches and SNAP food benefits — a linchpin in the system providing food and stability for families.
“It’s really not just about me, and I’m sure a lot of federal workers will say the same, it’s really not just about us losing our job,” said Erin Bartlett, who worked on WIC, which helps feed low-income pregnant women and babies, before she was let go. “We provide food to vulnerable families who now are going to face even more barriers to access the nutrition and support that they desperately need.”
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment for this story. The agency announced in mid-February that it was “pursuing an aggressive plan to optimize its workforce by eliminating positions that are no longer necessary.”
“I welcome DOGE’s efforts at USDA because we know that its work makes us better, stronger, faster, and more efficient,” Brooke Rollins, the newly appointed agriculture secretary, said in a statement at the time.
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told GBH News cuts would affect people on the ground.
“You start cutting their workforce down and things are going to take longer. And the likelihood of mistakes are going to increase,” he said. “This has nothing to do with fraud, waste and abuse or efficiency. This is a cruel thing to do, making it more challenging for people who need food and nutrition to be able to get it.”
Health policy experts like Stephanie Ettinger De Cuba at Boston University’s School of Public Health say the sudden loss of staff could put the work of feeding vulnerable people in danger.
“What people need to understand is that the regional office does really vital behind-the-scenes work that makes all the systems that we interact with on the street, in our lives, actually work,” she said. “People sometimes just don’t understand how much of what seems to just run smoothly is because government is actually working.”
“I’m sure a lot of federal workers will say the same, it’s really not just about us losing our job.”Erin Bartlett, former USDA employee
Vicky Negus, a SNAP policy advocate with the Mass Law Reform Institute, said the work requires a technical knowledge and understanding of complex systems — whose presence will be missed.
“This is not glamorous work,” she said. “It runs the real risk of harming people in every single city and town in Massachusetts and across the country.”
Bartlett helped oversee the network of stores where people can buy food with federal benefits like WIC and SNAP. In Massachusetts, there are roughly 5,000 retailers from box stores to farmers markets approved to accept benefits — and the regional office oversees everything from contracts to the programming of point of sale devices.
Another former staffer worked on SNAP, the largest nutrition assistance program in the country that serves an estimated one in six Massachusetts residents. She didn’t want to be identified for fear of retribution and said her team already suffered from staffing shortages.
“That is going to trickle down to folks that are on these needed programs and benefits,” she said. “We work with the most vulnerable populations — children, veterans, seniors, homeless. ... That’s why we do the work we do.”
The worker said she had only been on the job for several months but had come from more than a decade working with the state.
“I left a very good job to go to a very good job to continue the mission and the work, because I love it so much,” she said, “I have a master’s in public health, so I’m shocked. Clearly this has nothing to do with the performance of federal workers. Sadly, this is something else entirely.”
Advocates and employees say the cuts aren’t efficient, and some argue they aren’t legal, either. Some employees are calling the layoffs “illegal terminations,” and are deciding whether to appeal or seek new jobs. They all received the same email citing performance issues — despite several having exemplary performance reviews.
“The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the email reads.
Mei, Bartlett and other say some may think “probationary” employees means little experience — usually those who’ve worked in their current role less than two years. But Bartlett says probationary staff often come with deep experience.
“During my time, my 16 months, I received six performance awards,” she said.
Others say the cuts belie the Trump administration’s purported goals of eliminating waste and fraud. Ettinger De Cuba, of Boston University, called the cuts “a kind of smokescreen.”
“If we’re really interested in having efficiency, then we need to have a careful, nuanced conversation with the people at the offices who know these roles best,” she said. “I’m sure those people have lots of really great ideas about how things could work better, but that’s not what’s happening.”
Bartlett’s trying to decide whether to appeal her layoff or look for new work. For now, worries about those she was hired to help.
“It’s just going to continue to create more barriers for these families that desperately need these services to get a head start in life or just a start in life,” she said. “I know that it may not be able to be seen immediately, but there is going to be an impact in the long run.”
