With the firing of over 1,000 staff at the National Park Service, news media coverage is starting to breakdown the overall numbers of people laid off and look at individual parks. The Gettysburg Times, for example, had a story a few days ago on the firing of four staffers at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. Gettysburg has the second most visitors each year of any National Park administered sites across the country with typical visitation of over a million people. On Valentine’s Day four staffers were let go. In addition, one staffer at Eisenhower National Historic Site, also in Gettysburg, was fired.
The Gettysburg Times interviewed Mark Cochran, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3145 union, which represents National Park Service employees. According to the Gettysburg Times:
“The rationale given for the dismissals is not supported by evidence from the employees’ records, claimed Cochran, who is also a full-time landscape preservationist at GNMP.
The Interior Department “determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment,” according to a letter sent to Nathaniel Bauder, one of the five fired GNMP employees.
That is “blatantly not correct,” said Bauder, who was about five weeks short of completing his probationary period.
In his last performance evaluation, a supervisor said he had “exceeded expectations,” said Bauder.
All five Gettysburg employees had excellent performance reviews, even though “the same form letter with the same cowardly script claimed otherwise,” Cochran wrote in a Facebook post Monday.
One of the dismissed employees, Wanda Poole, was an administrative assistant at the battlefield, and Jessica Walker was an archivist at Eisenhower, Cochran said.
Bauder and two others, Leon Moxley and Mike Haines, were assigned to GNMP’s bed-and-breakfast program, through which two historic homes on the battlefield are available for overnight accommodations.
The three maintained the houses and adjoining grounds and did turnovers between guests’ stays, Bauder said, although 75% of his time was spent doing landscape work, such as repairing fences, mowing, and clearing fallen trees.
Bauder said he also did work as a wildland firefighter, participating in prescribed burns and even responding to fire last summer at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
Bauder hopes to challenge the termination through a congressional inquiry since the job “was not only a childhood dream, but a dream that I worked hard to make a reality,” he said.
He grew up in the Finger Lakes region of New York, but his family visited Gettysburg when he was a child, where he would ask the rangers how they got their jobs, Bauder said.
He earned a master’s degree in public history and a graduate certificate in cultural resource management. When he came to Gettysburg as in intern in 2019, “I fell in love with the work and mission of the NPS (and my wife),” he wrote in the Facebook post.
After working the next few years as a seasonal hire, he said a chance at a full-time position came about in March 2024 when the park opened the two historic homes to public leasing.
Cochran, who remembered first meeting Bauder at a chainsaw safety class, said he is “passionate about history.”
Bauder had just finished a full shift around 3 p.m. Friday when he was instructed to see the head of maintenance, who told him and one of his coworkers they would be receiving a letter of termination, he said. The letter didn’t show up in his government email account until 6:30 p.m., so he didn’t see it until Saturday morning, when he went to collect personal items, he said.
NPS administrators in Gettysburg have been transparent and “supportive through all of this,” Bauder said.
Cochran said he has been communicating with GNMP Superintendent Kristina Heister over the last three weeks as the two have shared information.
For now, Cochran has gathered all the termination letters from AFGE Council 270, including six from Fort McHenry National Monument, 15 from Shenandoah National Park, and at least 10 others, and passed them to the union’s district leadership, he said.
AFGE is the largest federal employee union, representing 800,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia, according to its website.
“This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley is quoted as saying in a statement released Friday.
With the administration’s quick start on Inauguration Day, “I’ve been living on a lot of rage and a lot of caffeine these last three weeks,” Cochran said.
Park service officials in Gettysburg claimed they would respond by late Tuesday morning, but no response was forthcoming by 5 p.m. Wednesday.”
Please contact your Congressional representatives to let them know that you object to this potentially illegal firing of staff staff.
Call the House of Representatives Switchboard to contact your Congressperson (202) 224-3121.
When you call you will likely have a live operator who will connect you to your Congressperson, so make sure you know the name of your Congressperson!
Note: The feature photo is of Nathaniel Bauder with wife Eva Blankenhorn.
Sucks to be 36 TRILLION in debt. Sad but necessary
On track to spend over $120 Million on Trump’s golf this year. Your priorities suck.
This is like 5th grade civics.
If a president disagree with how congress have decide to spend the money, he should get congress to pass a new budget. The GOP got a majority in both chambers…
What is going on is obviously unconstitutional… something the GOP use to care about
Only a fraction of people in the US get to work their “dream job” the rest of us 163 million taxpayers are working the necessary jobs! And we’re tired of being forced to subsidize “dream jobs”! I am sorry that it didn’t work out for these people, but if they really love their job the private sector offers them much more potential. As for the lawsuit, what part of “probational employee “ do they not understand and the lawsuit could potentially reopen the case of the people vs government labor unions potentially ruling them unconstitutional.
You are acting like “dream job” is synonymous with well-paid. These folks are literally public servants. Preserving and protecting our national parks is selfless work. You want to actually make a meaningful dent in the needless federal spending? Tell your Congressional representatives to start refusing to pay for what is shaping up to be 120 million in Trump golf expenses this year.
Here, here.. I work in my “dream job” (a librarian) and love it – a job I went to school for and give 200% to when I can.. yet get paid squat as my rent goes up every year and no raises (half my paycheck goes to rent now) because the state divides out money sparingly and practices encroachment on free speech in incremental policies that mirrors the rise of censorship nationwide (again Florida) and punishes education and people who devote thier time and interest in it…
AI get the idea that you think a “dream job” is a frivolous pursuit that you think contributes nothing to our society, while real, hardworking folk not only bust their butts everyday, but also have topick up the slack for the :irresponsible” who get to have fun on some “dream job” because, you know, work isn’t supposed to be fun.
Personally, I think it’s awesome when a person is on a job they actually enjoy. And I know that some of us take jobs that make us happy, even if they pay less than other jobs.
And the other thing is, a “dream job” doesn’t even have to be a paid profession. It can be a hobby, or volunteerism. I just think it’s great when people can live out their dreams and be happy. And it’s not their fault or their problem if someone else who is miserable and frustrated with their job and/or their life and has’t figured out how to live a happier and be fulfilled.
So, you used work at Gettysburg and now you’re a creeper working with little girl cheerleaders? Yikes! That is an impressive, necessary job you have there. The NPS work is frivolous compared to working with little girl cheerleaders.
Sorry, I went harder there than I should have. The temper gets loose from time to time when faced with constant hypocrisy. I can’t delete so please feel free to clean this up, Patrick.
typical response…. those of us who devote our lives to a ‘vocation’ and get squat for it like to think that education is not so much as a ‘dream job’ as a major contribution to the culture and country as opposed to those who cannot see beyond the attitude of conservatives who see the world as “I have mine, screw everyone else’ The “private sector” is for those who value nothing more than themselves ….. conservatives pretend to value the heritage yet see it more from the attitude of a businessman – whom Adam Smith condemned as an irresponsible leader:
“The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public … The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order … ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined … with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men … who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public” ― Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Volume 1 of 2