Musk ‘Buyout’ Accepted by More Than 20,000 Federal Workers
(Bloomberg) -- More than 20,000 employees — about 1% of the federal workforce — have signed up for an offer to quit their jobs in exchange for a deferred resignation deal that would have taxpayers continue to pay their salaries through the end of September.
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But those numbers are increasing every day, according to an official familiar with the data, and the Trump administration expects a spike in resignations as employees near Thursday’s deadline to accept the offer.
President Donald Trump and his efficiency czar, Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, hopes that the offer could cull as much as 10% of the federal workforce.
That target could be difficult to meet. There are nearly 2.3 million civilian federal employees, but perhaps half of those — including civilian defense and intelligence employees, postal workers, law enforcement personnel and certain other sensitive positions — are ineligible for the offer.
Those 20,000 employees could also include many people who were already planning to retire in the coming months. An average of 62,000 federal workers have retired each year over the past decade, according to data provided by the US Office of Personnel Management. Some 298,000 employees will become eligible for retirement within the next two years.
And federal employee unions have urged members to be skeptical of the offers, which they said were not guaranteed. The National Treasury Employees Union said the program was “designed to entice or scare you into resigning,” and the American Federation of Government Employees said the intent was “to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
As a result, the Office of Personnel Management has given increasingly detailed guidance on the offer, and put its key terms in writing.
OPM’s acting director and top lawyer also defended the legality of the plan in a memo to agencies Tuesday, assuring employees that any signed departure agreement was “binding on the government.”
“Were the government to backtrack on its commitments, an employee would be entitled to request a rescission of his or her resignation,” OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell wrote.
Though colloquially known as a “buyout,” the deferred resignation plan is structured differently than those often found in the private sector. Employees have until Thursday to accept and could leave their jobs by the end of February. They’re free to take other jobs as long as they don’t conflict with their continued federal employment. They also have to agree not to sue the government.
(Updates with data on federal retirements, OPM memo defending the legality of the offer)
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