‘At first it was unbelief’: Nebraska federal worker fired despite near perfect evaluation
WOOD RIVER, Neb. (KLKN) — A Nebraska woman is fighting to keep her job after receiving a shocking letter notifying her of her termination.
“The termination letters we received were inaccurate,” said Lindsey Nielsen of Grand Island, who works for the Food and Drug Administration. “In fact, our job titles were inaccurate.”
The letter she received from the FDA on Feb. 15 says she was being let go for poor performance.
Lindsey Nielsen's letter of termination
But two weeks before receiving that letter, she was given a performance evaluation that contradicts that claim.
According to her evaluation, she scored a 4.75 out of 5, one of the highest scores in her department.
“The employee consistently excels in all aspects of her role,” the evaluation said.
She was even promoted in January.
It’s taken Nielsen a while to accept this.
“At first it was unbelief that this was happening, and then it went into your panic, and you feel completely lost and hopeless,” she said.
But she’s not alone. Nielsen was one of thousands of federal workers to receive this news.
But the decision wasn’t even from her own agency; it was from the Office of Personnel Management.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the OPM has no authority to fire employees except its own.
But the ruling doesn’t require the workers to be rehired, and Nielsen feels the way she was fired isn’t how things should go.
“It took me back the feelings of when I was a little kid and my grandma would talk about why she came to the United States,” said Nielsen. “It made me very reminiscent, and I felt like this wasn’t America, this wasn’t what we were used to seeing, that you could just be wrongfully terminated, outside of your own agency.”
Since receiving the letters, everyone else in her department has been reinstated.
Nielsen is on administrative leave until March 14, when her termination is set to take effect.
