The US Census supervisor of the Chicago area ordered the dismissal of census door knockers despite a federal judge halting such layoffs two weeks ago, according to audio of the phone call ordering the dismissals obtained by the Associated Press.
“I would really like to get a head start on terminating these people,” he said on the Thursday conference call with managers, according to the AP report. “All of these inactives that we have, we need to get rid of them. So hunt down your inactives, collect their devices, get them terminated and off of our lists.”
The Trump Administration had hired door knockers in August to contact people who had not yet submitted census forms, and planned to terminate the positions just two months later. In contrast, during the 2010 Census, door knockers were hired in May and terminated them in September.
At the beginning of the month, the judge ordered the US Census to keep workers on to get a complete count of the population. Government lawyers agreed that the agency would not lay off workers.
Instead, according to the recording, the Chicago supervisor encouraged managers to get workers to resign or create a reason to fire them.
“It doesn’t have to be their performance is poor. It just means it’s not good enough,” he said. “If you are going to terminate someone for performance, I want you to consult me first. But I’m pretty much going to be on your side, no matter what.”