>>What the hell were they doing before?<<
I worked for the Federal Government for 30 years and observed that a minimum of 40 percent of the employees could have been terminated without any loss of effective operations for the simple reason that the 40 percent referred to did virtually nothing but warm their chairs and collect their paychecks.
My husband has worked for fedgov for over 30 years.
The union rep person in his department was gone on union business a good portion of the time. The rep was always in meetings (sometimes gone for up to 3 days), or was helping someone with union business and therefore unavailable to do the work in the department. It was unreal.
This would never be allowed in the private sector.