WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor will no longer give its employees backup child care and certain other perks, according to an internal announcement obtained by HuffPost.
Emergency backup day care, child care subsidies, and an employee mental health program are apparently the latest casualties in efforts by billionaire Elon Musk to slash the federal bureaucracy for President Donald Trump.
Musk pledged to purge $2 trillion from the annual federal budget, and so far the Trump administration has chipped away at the goal by firing thousands of federal workers while taking smaller steps to make work less accommodating for the ones who remain, such as by reducing remote work and now by targeting even smaller perks.
The Labor Department’s internal notice said the changes would take effect early in May but that backup day care — something workers can use if their kid’s school is closed or their regular day care provider is unavailable — was already canceled last month except for previously scheduled visits.
The email gave no justification for the changes, which likely won’t save huge sums of money but could help the Trump administration continue to signal it is cracking down on the federal workforce.
“We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work,” Trump said in a speech to a joint session of Congress last week. “My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy, and we will restore true democracy to America again. Any federal bureaucrat who resists this change will be removed from office immediately.”
Spokespeople for the Labor Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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