Amid fears of mass layoffs, federal employees at the Portsmouth Naval Yard in Kittery, Maine, have been ordered to list five accomplishments from the previous week, NBC affiliate NEWS CENTER Maine reports.
Workers were initially told to ignore an email from the Office of Personnel Management requesting the information, but new instructions from the Department of Defense are mandating a response. The shipyard has a federal workforce of around 6,000 people, according to NEWS CENTER Maine.
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This comes as federal workers across the country face uncertainty amid the Trump administration's efforts to downsize the government.
Eudes James, president of the Local 4 Union that covers the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said employees are complying, but have expressed concerns about how such a large number of responses can be considered.
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"Asking individual employees, 'Tell me what you did last week.' That seems to be a very big task for an agency to respond to individual employees. I've gotten a lot of opinions from people that believe it's AI that's going to respond. It tells me it's not a person reviewing the content of the emails," James told the news station.
No major layoffs have been announced, though some of the shipyard's employees recently accepted buyouts. They are expected to leave work this week.
