Workers at the Togus Veterans Administration Medical Center in Augusta have been fired, a hiring freeze was lifted at Acadia National Park and a job fair at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has been canceled.

It’s all part of the latest — and sometimes contradictory — federal workforce shifts brought on by Trump administration policies to cut the size of government.

Probationary employees at the Togus VA Medical Center were fired by email Monday night for allegedly “poor performance” without warning, the Maine AFL-CIO said Tuesday. It’s not clear how many workers were fired. Probationary workers are those with two or fewer years on the job, but the label can also include more experienced workers who recently moved to a new agency or position.

A “small number” of probationary staff in Maine were terminated this month, VA Maine spokesperson Jason Carter said in an email Tuesday night. He did not provide a more precise number when asked.

“This decision will have no negative effect on Veteran health care, benefits or other services,” Carter said. “We cannot discuss specific personnel matters due to privacy concerns.”

Affected workers were locked out of their emails Tuesday morning, the AFL-CIO said. Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, said veterans were among the “arbitrarily fired” workers. He said he was informed of job cuts by the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents federal workers and is a member of the state labor federation.

“The impacted VA employees whom we’ve spoken to have served our country honorably and took great pride in their work supporting other veterans. These firings will hurt Maine veterans and undermine the services they rely on,” Schlobohm said in a written statement.

Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said in a statement on social media Tuesday that the cuts are “dangerous” to veterans.

“If you can’t get someone to answer the phone then that’s an obstacle to the care, services and benefits our veterans earned and deserve,” he said.

The Maine VA reiterated on social media that it’s maintaining its efforts to fill “mission-critical roles,” including nurses, doctors and police officers. Dozens of open job postings were listed on the agency’s website Tuesday afternoon.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that more than 1,400 employees nationally were dismissed. Those fired were in non-mission-critical roles, the agency said. Nearly 40,000 probationary employees are considered mission-critical, the agency said. The jobs are exempt from the federal hiring freeze.

The cuts were expected to save the department $83 million per year nationally, it said. Doug Collins, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement that the firings would not hurt VA health care or benefits.

Meanwhile, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum informed her that he has “secured an exception” to a hiring freeze at Acadia that will allow seasonal workers to begin their jobs.

The Trump administration last month imposed a three-month hiring freeze delaying the filling of 120 seasonal positions at the popular park.

In response to conversations with officials from Friends of Acadia, a conservation organization, and the National Parks Conservation Association, Collins said she discussed with Burgum the “problems that the department’s hiring freeze creates for Acadia” because it would not be able to hire seasonal employees needed to collect entrance fees, maintain trails and provide first responder services.

About 11,000 federal workers are employed in Maine.

The Portsmouth Navy Shipyard announced on social media that a March 4 hiring event has been canceled.

“As we seek to understand and prioritize resources, a temporary recruiting and hiring pause has been implemented for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard,” it said.

A spokeswoman for the shipyard did not immediately respond to an email seeking details about the hiring event or its cancelation.

Collins and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., have said the Portsmouth shipyard needs to hire 550 workers a year to meet Navy demand. It remains unclear whether any shipyard workers accepted buyouts this month as part of a related effort to reduce the federal workforce.