The Trump administration offered “deferred resignation” to employees willing to resign now and get paid through September. The fine print of the offer, which came from the allegedly hijacked Office of Personnel Management (OPM), suggests that some or most workers will not be expected to continue working through September, effectively making this a buyout.
The agreement states that, after accepting the deferred resignation offer, “my employing agency will likely make adjustments in response to my resignation including moving, eliminating, consolidating, reassigning my position and tasks, reducing my official duties, and/or placing me on paid administrative leave until my resignation date.” Administrative leave allows an employee to collect their salary while not working. But, as the agreement makes clear, that is not guaranteed.
Judd Legum
The offer was sent to all federal employees except for members of the military, postal workers, employees working in national security or immigration enforcement, and select positions excluded by each agency. The Trump administration expects 5%-10% of the federal workforce to quit, according to a senior official speaking with NBC News. Reached for comment by NBC, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Everett Kelley said the move should not be interpreted as voluntary.
Purging the federal government of dedicated career civil servants will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government. Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.
The email sent to federal workers led with the subject “A fork in the road,” which is identical to the subject line used by Elon Musk when he emailed Twitter staff in late 2022, demanding they all get “extremely hardcore”—or get out.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
The word “buyout” is succinct and works well in clickbait-y headlines, sure, but as Judd Legum reports for Popular Information, using that term to describe what Donny’s minions did is misleading and false.
A ‘buyout’ is when an employer agrees to pay an employee a lump sum, often equivalent to the employee’s salary for a particular length of time, in exchange for their voluntary resignation. After agreeing to the buyout offer, the employee receives the money, and their obligations to the employer end. The Trump administration is proposing something very different.
Everything Donald Trump touches usually has at least a tinge of subversiveness or corruption, but this one has an outsized amount all on its own. As Legum notes, the offer for “deferred resignation” actually makes no sense (many employees are already working from home) and could be contrary to Federal labor guidelines.
Federal law caps payments to incentivize voluntary resignation at $25,000, which is a lot less than most federal employees make in eight months. As a result, the deferred resignation program itself could be deemed illegal if it is viewed as a violation of the Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002, which established the cap.
The Offer from OPM
