Trump invites nearly all federal workers to quit now, get paid through September
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump is inviting nearly all federal employees to quit by September 30. The offer came in an email from the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as the government's HR department. The deadline to decide is a week from Thursday. NPR labor correspondent Andrea Hsu joins us now. Hey.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: OK, tell me more. What exactly were federal employees told in this email that went out?
HSU: Yeah. Well, the subject line was fork in the road, and it began with a summary of the major changes that the Trump administration has announced for the federal workforce since last Monday, which include an end to telework and a pretty dramatic slimming-down of agencies. And it laid out this choice for federal workers, you know, basically saying, if you want to leave, offer your resignation now. It'll be effective September 30. You'll be on administrative leave with full pay and benefits through then. And it also said, you know, if you don't want to leave, that's fine, but the memo says, and I'll quote it, "we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency." So in other words, no promises about your job. And we're told this offer went out to most of the civilian workforce of 2.3 million people. Who it did not go to were post office employees, people doing immigration enforcement and national security, and then some select employees that were excluded by their agencies.
KELLY: And this email just went out, but what kind of reaction are you hearing from workers so far?
HSU: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people are still digesting this. You know, the federal workers I've spoken with this week are terrified for their jobs. They're confused. They've been deluged with these orders that completely have upended their work. They know people have been reassigned suddenly to other jobs against their will. And - you know, so I think some workers who have been remote for years, since before the pandemic, they may have already been planning to resign, so maybe some of them will take this offer. But others I've spoken to this week are really determined to stay in their jobs. You know, they took these jobs because they believe in the mission. They believe in serving the country. They want to be enforcing the law, providing - or providing, you know, opportunities for workers or whatever their jobs for the government might be. So I suspect for a lot of these people, a few months of pay may not change that.
KELLY: Has the Trump administration said what it is trying to accomplish here?
HSU: Well, all along, the administration has made no secret of their desire to completely remake the federal workforce. You know, remember Trump campaigned on a message of draining the swamp, getting rid of what he called rogue bureaucrats, and he's made clear he wants to bring in people who will faithfully carry out his policies. And in order to do that, he needs to make room for those people, and getting lots of people to quit voluntarily is actually easier than firing people, especially firing career civil servants who do have protections.
You know, Elon Musk, the, you know, Tesla billionaire who's advising Trump, he even forecast in an op-ed last fall that forcing people to return to the office five days a week would result in voluntary terminations, which he said at the time, we would welcome. And I'll note that that resignation offer that went out today was really similar to a letter that he sent to employees at Twitter shortly after he bought the company. It had the same fork-in-the-road subject line, and he shrunk that workforce by 80%.
KELLY: And just quickly, Andrea, the president in the meantime has been on a firing spree. He's fired top lawyers. He's fired people at agencies across the government. What's the latest on that?
HSU: Yeah. Well, today, I reported on his firing of two Democratic commissioners at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board. You know, he is really hobbling these agencies with these firings, and, you know, we know that there are going to be legal challenges over this.
KELLY: NPR's Andrea Hsu, thank you.
HSU: You're welcome.
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