US labour dept to end mental health, child care benefits for own staff

By Josh Eidelson

  The US Department of Labor has told staff it is terminating benefit programmes supporting mental health and dependent care, with most of the cuts scheduled to take effect this week.      

DOL’s Worklife4You programme, which offers prenatal kits for expecting parents, nurse visits to help with eldercare, and personal finance and wellness advice, is being discontinued effective May 9, a DOL labour relations specialist informed union officials in a March message viewed by Bloomberg News. An employee assistance programme, which offers counseling sessions for addressing issues including anxiety and substance misuse, will end the same day, other than a “limited number” of remaining sessions for staff who were in “drug testing designated positions” or had been “recommended for counseling as part of an employee relations matter,” the message stated.  

 

 

The Department’s “emergency back-up dependent care” benefit is also being terminated Friday, after being suspended in February, and its child-care subsidy programme ended May 1, according to the message.

 

DOL spokespeople did not respond to inquiries. Under President Donald Trump, the agency has made sweeping cuts aligned with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The cutbacks aren’t just internal. The agency is moving to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from its Bureau of International Labor Affairs, among other reductions.

 

The department’s union will challenge the elimination of the employee assistance programme, a benefit that its collective bargaining agreement requires that management work with the union to promote, said Jefferson Suchman, president of one of the American Federation of Government Employees’ affiliates there. Once the termination of the programme takes effect, AFGE plans to file a grievance alleging the move violates the contract as well as executive orders tackling drug addiction. The union is already challenging other Trump changes at the agency, including curbs on telework. 

 

“They are trying to make people quit,” said Suchman, a 12-year DOL employee. 

 

More than 2,700 of DOL’s roughly 14,600 employees already agreed to Musk’s “deferred resignation” programme, according to AFGE.

 

The programmes being cut “are a tiny portion of DOL’s personnel budget,” according to Seth Harris, who served as acting Labor secretary under President Barack Obama, and so cutting them isn’t a serious way to save money, he said in an email. “It’s cruelty masquerading as fiscal responsibility.”

 

Several of the benefits being eliminated are still advertised on the department’s website for potential hires, though the agency lists no open positions amid a governmentwide hiring freeze.

 

DOL’s website says that the employee assistance programme’s services are “designed to help employees, managers, and organisations meet life challenges and remain healthy, engaged, and productive.” It also notes DOL “was one of the first federal agencies to establish an onsite day-care center,” and says its child-care subsidies reflect its “commitment to foster a quality work place for all its employees.” The subsidy program offered employees reimbursements that could range from $450 to $800 a month depending on income and the cost of care, according to internal documents seen by Bloomberg.