About a half-dozen civilian employees were laid off at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Tuesday as part of a national effort to cut costs for the federal government, labor leaders announced.

The termination orders came from the Department of the Navy, not the shipyard itself, and are part of an effort by billionaire Elon Musk’s digital and cost-cutting team, which calls itself the Department of Government Efficiency, the Maine AFL-CIO said.

The shipyard did not respond to requests to confirm the firings Tuesday night.

“There are people making decisions who are not educated about the business end of what we do and what the impact will be of cutting all of these employees,” said Bill Webber, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2024.

The impacted employees were all “entry-level secretaries” with less than a year experience and “at the very bottom of the pay scale,” Webber said in a phone call.

“It’s not saving you a trillion dollars,” he said, referencing spending cut goals that have been articulated by members of the Trump administration.

Those impacted were level-5 employees on the general schedule pay scale, ranging between steps 1 and 3, he said. That scale, which is broken up by region, includes 15 levels (based on perceived job difficulty) and 10 steps, which equate to about a 3% salary increase each. The shipyard is covered by the Boston region, Webber said.

That means those fired were each being paid between $45,679 and $48,723 annually.

All told, the cuts equate to less than $300,000 in salary payments — less than a thousandth of the more than $716 million in payroll the shipyard reported in 2023, according to the Seacoast Shipyard Association’s 2024 economic impact report.

The AFGE represents more than 500 workers at the shipyard, including shipyard police, secretaries and other administrative workers and training instructors, the union said.

Webber charged that the staffing cuts were made without appropriate consideration and seem to disregard the contributions and roles of fired workers.

“We already have a hiring freeze, so when they get rid of those positions and urge people to take buyout offers, the work doesn’t disappear. It just means the workload gets shoved off to somebody else who has to do more work for the same pay,” he said in the statement.

A spokesperson for the shipyard did not return phone calls or emailed questions attempting to confirm the layoffs and inquiring about why these employees were let go, how much the shipyard would save with the cuts or whether additional layoffs are on the table.

The shipyard employs more than 4,100 Mainers and 2,900 residents of New Hampshire, plus around 400 workers from other states, according to the shipyard association’s last economic impact report.

Maine’s congressional delegation previously warned against cuts at the shipyard.