Elon Musk’s Doge staffers face protest over labor department visit

Workers at the US Department of Labor are organizing a protest ahead of the scheduled meeting of Elon Musk’s staff at the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) with the management at Frances Perkins Building in Washington DC at 4pm on Wednesday.

“Lower-level IT supervisors were basically asked to plan to stay late after the 4pm meeting to assist with getting Doge folks set up on our systems,” a Department of Labor employee who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said.

The meeting comes as Elon Musk’s SpaceX is fighting in federal court against the labor department’s National Labor Relations Board, alleging the board’s makeup is unconstitutional, in response to appeals over federal labor law violations against the company.

Musk’s companies have also faced significant fines issued by divisions with the agency at Tesla, SpaceX and Boring Company.

Musk and his staff at Doge have taken aim at several federal agencies, from shutting down the US Agency for International Development, which Musk falsely claimed was a “criminal organization”, to gaining direct access to the payment systems within the US treasury department responsible for nearly all payments by the US government.

Many of the actions by Musk and his staffers have been reported to be illegal, prompting lawsuits to block their access to federal data and servers.

This week, Doge staff have been reported at the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Tuesday.

The agency visits from Musk’s staff come after they took over the office of personnel management shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration and have sent mass emails to all federal employees pushing for voluntary resignations amid efforts to significantly reduce the federal workforce and reclassify swaths of federal employees as political appointees without civil service protections.

The US Department of Labor has been reached for comment.