20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
276 comments
·February 5, 2025Shank
Larrikin
Aren't Twitter workers still trying to get their severances and they took the offer when Twitter actually had the money to pay.
carom
To my knowledge, no. Former employees sued to get Twitter's old pre-acquisition severance package and the court dismissed it. [1]
1. https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/10/elon-musk-does-not-owe-ex-...
reaperducer
Aren't Twitter workers still trying to get their severances and they took the offer when Twitter actually had the money to pay.
Considering that SpaceX is so far behind on its bills that dozens and dozens of companies in Texas have had to place liens against the company, my guess is that neither the Twitter people, nor the SpaceX people, nor the federal buyout people will ever see a dime.
For some reason, links to stories about the leins and SpaceX becoming notorious for not paying its bills are hard to come by, but it's in the printed newspapers regularly; as recently as yesterday. Here's and older link I could find: https://www.chron.com/culture/article/spacex-overdue-bills-t...
robocat
The article mentions $2.5MM liens which is drastically less than 1% of expenses of $1445MM ("[SpaceX] generated $55 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2023")
It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying.
I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company.
Their costs of deliquent payment are likely below their lending costs. So optimally don't pay until the cost of deliquency exceeds lending costs (maybe ≈ junk bond rate per year).
casenmgreen
Is it possible Mr. Musk's companies are actually in deep trouble financially, and this political stuff is actually a means to an end?
weinzierl
I am complete outsider and know nothing about this so I am sorry to ask but in my view this is a shocking proposition. Can anyone corroborate this?
bmitc
They're hard to come by because people think rockets magically solve all of our problems and so any problems they introduce are ignored for the "greater good".
veggieroll
I think the adminstration's plan to execute on this is basically garden leave. They tell the "retiring" employees to stop working, but keep them on the payroll so they keep getting paid.
This administration has been playing a lot of games with "budgeted" vs. "delayed" vs. "actively being worked on" (or not). So this isn't really that different than the abrupt cancellations or delays or re-org'ing of funded and legislatively mandated work.
The main difference is the uncertainty. IMO anyone would be incredibly foolish to accept a deal from a random email with such limited info on the exact terms of what happens in edge cases like you describe: shutdown, budget shenanigans, actual official RIF, etc.
stevage
Would that cause employees to break laws if they accepted employment elsewhere during that time?
scottyah
No, it is specifically stated that there are no repercussions for finding other work.
bigmattystyles
That sounds illegal
ryandrake
Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" but it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx.
EDIT: I'm not making any judgment about whether this particular thing is legal or not--just pointing out that it doesn't matter if it's legal if nobody in power intends to enforce the law.
yapyap
oh brother, totally agree.
but also, legality is a thing of the past in the new way of things it feels.
cm2187
Garden leaves are done all the times in the private sector.
dgfitz
Do you know how many federal employees were paid to stay home for months during covid, not working at all because of the classified nature of their work?
Lots.
csa
> this was never authorized by congress,
Correct.
> so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best
Incorrect.
The money is budgeted through September (end of federal FY). Things are currently only funded through March 15 (CRs and whatnot). The money is or will be there. Historically, even if there is a furlough, this money is backfilled and folks are paid. Note that there will probably be riots if lengthy furloughed folks don’t get back pay.
> So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations.
Correct.
The speculation is that:
1. The “resign” folks will be put on admin leave in March 1 (or earlier).
2. Budget impasse in mid-March. Furlough ensues.
3. Folks on admin leave just end up getting cut, or not paid, and/or not back paid due to peculiarities of admin leave.
> It would be an incredibly generous and nice buyout package, but obviously if it gets torn up after a month it's not that great of a deal.
I think it’s above average, but not “incredibly generous”. People get $25k VSIP and VERA offers all the time. This may not seem like a lot, but many fed employees live in low COL areas and/or earn relatively low wages.
The best parts of the package, assuming they deliver, would be things like insurance (for non-retirees) and possibly TSP contributions and matching (if those are allowed).
If they want the numbers they say that they want, I think something near this level of package is necessary.
rich_sasha
Is it a given there would be a budget impasse, if all institutions of power are held by Republicans?
Non-American here with only a Mickey Mouse understanding of US mechanics of power.
johnrgrace
Republicans only hold the house by two seats so to pass something they need to have everyone on board. Any single republican member of congress that wants to hold the whole thing hostage for demands pretty much can.
Jtsummers
It's happened before. In 2018 the shutdowns occurred despite the Republican hold over both houses.
stonogo
Generally a small cadre of extremists within the ruling party holds the entire government hostage for a few days over performative nonsense for future campaign purposes.
csa
> Is it a given there would be a budget impasse, if all institutions of power are held by Republicans?
I’m not an expert on this topic, so please take these comments with a grain of salt:
1. The simplest way a budget impasse could start is with internal feuding within the Republican Party. Some Republicans are very aggressive deficit hawks all the time. Some Republicans are only “deficit hawks” when a Democrat is president, but they spend freely when a Republican is president. Note that almost all of the largest budget deficits since 1990 have been under Republican administrations (Covid years under Trump and Biden were wonky and should probably be asterisked). So the pork-seeking Republicans and the deficit hawk Republicans can get into a stand off about what the budget should be.
2. Even if Congress is on the same page, Trump can choose not to sign the budget if he doesn’t get his pet issues addressed. This may seem like something that they should be able to work out beforehand, but his “priorities” change, sometimes daily, often based on who he happened to have spoken to last.
3. Some republicans want the government to break. The playbook here is to break the system in some way, point out that the system doesn’t work, and then make attempts to privatize that system or massively overhaul that system (likely with massive cuts of workers and largesse to contractors). It may seem odd that an elected official strives to make the government not work, but they are able to make that tack work for them at the polls. I think that this is a deep (and warped) issue that is hard for me to explain well.
michaelmrose
So the fed defunding whatever they like by fiat gives the Republicans nothing to offer the other side to play ball because anything that they offer could easily be taken away. Its like showing up to the auction with monopoly money.
Without the dems they need almost every Republican to agree because their margin is only 5 votes. Historically this is difficult because their ranks now include several morons and extremists most notably the lady who actually believed Jews were responsible for starting wildfires with space based lasers.
If a handful of extremists don't ask for crazy nonsense they will still have every hand out for pork.
Then it goes to the Senate where it needs 60 votes including dems to pass anything. The first round of crazy if it passes anything might easily end up with something too stupid to pass the Senate without also termination of the fillibuster.
null
NoMoreNicksLeft
If they were not paid because they were on "admin leave", does that look bad for Trump, or does that look bad for Congress? And who in a Republican Congress will want to do that anyway? They're mostly on board for this bullshit aren't they?
sitkack
Nothing looks bad to them, so it doesn't matter. Looking bad isn't a deterrent any more.
scarface_74
Nothing ever looks bad for Trump. His followers will always make excuses for him. The latest is that Trump campaigned on “America First” and isolationism and now MAGAs are cheering his ideas of using American troops to take over the Gaza Strip and making it a tourist destination.
csa
> If they were not paid because they were on "admin leave", does that look bad for Trump, or does that look bad for Congress?
It would be Trump/Elon.
Someone told me the details of how they could not pay people. It’s administrivia. It will go unnoticed by most just like how the twitter folks not getting paid went unnoticed by most.
> And who in a Republican Congress will want to do that anyway?
They give zero fucks about fucking over feds or former Feds, as they are (allegedly) all lazy and useless.
The end result will be less money spent (trivial, but still) and a lower head count moving forward.
The Republican rhetoric on this largely doesn’t jibe with reality.
Yes, there are underemployed people in the federal government (as exist in any large org). Identifying that slack and cutting it is not something that can be done with laser shots from space. They can only be done from the ground, imho. The current way they are doing things is going to end with a lot of unpleasant unintended consequences.
remarkEon
Have the exact payment details been released? Because I understood it as "you will get paid same as always through September, you just don't have to show up to work". Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that doesn't sound like a "buyout" in the traditional sense.
Jtsummers
It is not a buyout. OPM has said that agencies can opt to put people who choose this on administrative leave (but they don't have to, they can keep the people working). So the effect is what the name is "deferred resignation", OPM pinky swears that you won't be cut before 30 September in a RIF or other actions if you take this offer and you'll get your biweekly pay as normal.
olalonde
Not American here. Isn't Congress controlled by Republicans? If I understand correctly, it would take 5+ Republicans voting against the party line for a Republican bill to fail to pass? Is this common?
joe_the_user
The question is whether if the deal gets voided by the court, the employee has to still quit or whether they can then return. Especially since the employee wouldn't be formally terminated until the end of the twelve months.
aeternum
If the gov will not be funded and you don't believe the gov will honor it's severance agreement why would you believe the employment contract will be honored after March 14?
Retric
There’s many examples of government shutdowns where workers received back pay even when they didn’t work those hours.
So future administrations are likely to retroactively approve payments if it becomes a political issue. Honestly taking the buyout without an act of congress backing it is likely the more risky here unless you where already planning to leave which is likely why most people took it.
Jtsummers
By law they have to be paid for the furloughed time in the case of a shutdown, since 2019. Previously, they were typically paid for that time whether they had to work through the shutdown or not but it was not guaranteed.
Fomite
And proposed by two people, Musk and Trump, who are, shall we say, not great at holding up their end of financial bargains.
root_axis
My personal and probably not unique prediction is that these people will be let go and not be paid - same thing he did with twitter.
justin66
There are some pretty significant differences between Twitter employees and federal government employees, starting with the fact that a lot of latter group are part of a powerful union.
root_axis
Let's see what happens. At this point, I'm not convinced the union has any leverage.
bmitc
The federal employee unions have incredible power, often to the detriment of the government.
toss1
Sure, but even in a normal situation, all the Union can do is provide greater resources to initiate legal and possibly work actions. Which, in a normal situation might be very effective.
This is NOT anything resembling a normal situation; to treat it as such is merely an exercise in normalcy bias.
Under an authoritarian regime, as is being setup as we type, legal actions are irrelevant as the judicial and legislative branches lose independence and serve the executive. Work actions likely result in the union being decertified and dissolved.
ahi
patco was also a powerful union. Trump has already declared he will nullify the AFGE contract (legality be damned).
duxup
I think they'd "like" to, but he legal protections for the employees in this case are vast compared to twitter. But as an employee, I would worry that they would try... we already have an administration that SCOTUS has decided is above the law in other ways.
fred_is_fred
It is worth looking back at President Musk's previous actions here. I know the twitter engineers sued. Was it ever settled?
hypothesis
It appears most of those claims went to arbitration, so we are unlikely to learn results…
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/most-lawsuit-over-m...
kevmo314
> The buyout offer entitles federal employees to stop working more or less immediately and continue to be paid through Sept. 30.
> The federal workforce's normal attrition rate is about 6% a year, meaning some of those who've taken the buyout may have been planning to leave government service anyway.
Wow, talk about an amazing deal if you already happened to be planning on leaving...
bilekas
> Critics argue the offer is illegal, there's no real guarantee people will get paid out, and it's something Congress would need to authorize.
Give then history of this particular admistration & business', I personally wouldn't be too confident in actually getting paid up to Sept.
iancmceachern
Totally, all those Twitter people that never saw it...
Molitor5901
Congress technically already authorized it when it approved the FY 2025 budget. That's why they are getting paid to September. That money was already approved and appropriated by congress, signed into law, and is the budget for that agency. They're spending that money how congress directed them to, but in a way congress likely never anticipated.
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems totally legal. There is no requirement to take the money, and it's very hard to get fired from the federal government.
thesuperbigfrog
>> Congress technically already authorized it when it approved the FY 2025 budget. That's why they are getting paid to September. That money was already approved and appropriated by congress, signed into law, and is the budget for that agency. They're spending that money how congress directed them to, but in a way congress likely never anticipated.
No money has been appropriated beyond March 14th.
"the promise to pay employees beyond Mar. 14 is unauthorized. The Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits an agency from entering a contract 'before any appropriation is made unless authorized by law.' The deferred resignation program offers employees pay that is not currently appropriated. Current appropriations will expire on Mar. 14th and, therefore, agencies currently lack the legal authority to agree to pay employees beyond this date."
Source: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/will-employees-who-resi...
dekhn
Multiple people have pointed that you are factually incorrect, so probably best to stop repeating this in comments across the post.
skovati
Congress hasn't actually agreed on a FY2025 budget though right? We're just running on Continuing Resolutions currently. So the budget is actually subject to change when this CR runs out March 14th.
Jtsummers
There was no FY 2025 budget. It's all CRs again, currently through 14 March.
tstrimple
In addition to what the others have stated regarding the 2025 budget being locked... Congress also authorized a lot of the things being ransacked right now like USAID. The rule of law seems to offer very little real protections here. So much of the US government is run on precedent and tradition and is incredibly vulnerable (as we're finding out) to folks who give zero fucks about precedent and tradition. Unfortunately the Democratic Party is still completely beholden to those precedents and traditions and have absolutely no clue how to handle opponents who don't.
Aurornis
> if you already happened to be planning on leaving...
This is why you should ignore any absolute numbers about people taking the buyout.
You want to look at the relative percentage taking the deal compared to their normal turnover.
If the number of people taking the "buyout" isn't significantly higher than their normal turnover, that's a sign that they're just overpaying people who were already leaving.
Molitor5901
I would not leave. Getting into the federal system was hard before, it's going to be near impossible now. For people who are not AI experts, engineers, doctors, etc. the federal government offers pay and benefits unparalleled to anything those same people would find in the private sector. Not to mention the job protections that really don't exist in any other private sector American company.
tombert
I feel like that used to be true, but I'm not sure it's been true for the last ~decade or so. My mom works for the federal government as an attorney. She likes her job, but she has mentioned to me that there are just as many layoff rounds, if not more, as you'd get in the private sector.
Moreover, there are a lot of things that are kind of bullshit; her office refused to provide paper towels or soap in the kitchen, so she had to spend her own money and bring them in herself.
Are soap or paper towels expensive? No, it's not beyond her means, but it's not like most private sector jobs "brag" about having paper towels near the sink, it's usually not considered a "perk".
ETA:
Just a note, these complaints go back to even the Obama years, I think.
drewda
Here's a detailed look at how total compensation compares between the private sector and federal positions by education level: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235
The key takeaways:
- staffers with high school or some college make more, on average, working for federal gov't, primarily due to the benefits. But it's an exaggeration to describe the difference as "unparalleled"
- comp is roughly equivalent for holders of bachelor's
- comp for holders of professional degrees or doctorates (JD, MD, MBA, PhD) is significantly lower on average for federal jobs
selectodude
What job protections? They’re predicated on the president following the constitution. We’re long, long past that.
scarface_74
You act as if the next step isn’t being fired and that the federal government won’t slash benefits.
pkulak
Yes... the job protections.
aurareturn
Wow, talk about an amazing deal if you already happened to be planning on leaving...
tombert
I also suspect that there really isn't nearly as much "waste" here as Musk is alleging, so we are going to be forced to re-hire people, while still paying a ton of workers for 8 months of no work.
This doesn't seem "efficient" to me, but "efficient" is a word that doesn't actually mean anything without context, which they don't provide.
gramie
Or even better, they can be brought back as contractors with vital skills and knowledge, at much higher cost!
rtkwe
A large part of the GOP playbook around their goal of smaller government is to make the government work worse then use that to argue government can't do the job and it shouldn't do it or it needs to be privatized. "We can't give immigrants their due process before deporting them that takes forever! (We also refuse to expand the number of judges serving those cases)" "Public schools are horrible and don't work! (We've been choking their budget for decades)" etc etc.
scarface_74
Re-hire people for what? They don’t want a functioning government
varsketiz
Well, it depends on what goals Trump and Musk consider worthwhile. Just hypothetically, if they dont consider healthcare for all a worthwhile goal - possibly every dollar spent on Obamacare is waste from their perspective.
I think they will find a lot of waste - question is if people in the USA will agree.
giarc
I heard that on average 10,000 employees retire every month. So if you had planned to retire in Jan/Feb/Mar, you might as well take the buy out and gain a few extra months of basically "free pay". That is assuming that it actually arrives in your bank account.
bmitc
So in addition to the mockery, they're paying people to do what they were already going to do for free? Small government and low spending indeed ...
francisofascii
If you wanted to hit a "years of service" number, this may not count towards that.
ericmcer
Pretty standard government worker deal. I am not crying too many tears over government workers facing just a smidge of the uncertainty that everyone else has been living with since Covid. Your salary/promotions/healthcare/retirement are no longer guaranteed by just doing enough to not get fired (which is almost impossible)? Boo hoo, Welcome to the reality that everyone else in the world works in. In tech we are scrabbling for jobs, navigating layoffs, and fighting tooth and nail to prove we create value and justify our salaries. I don't think it is cruel to request "public servants" do the same.
8 months paid would be an insane deal for private industry layoffs. We all just get a sad email and some well wishes.
afavour
Most of us in tech also get paid far, far more than anyone in the public sector. It’s always been my perception that the reliability of the job is a perk that makes up for the subpar salaries. I don’t think public sector workers are as spoiled as you make out.
psychlops
How does your job security and pension compare?
n0rdy
I've always found this approach of reducing the number of employees unwise from the company perspective (but pretty good for the employees, though).
While the unsatisfied employees are the target, my observations indicate that a high percentage of active and skilled people are willing to take this offer, as they are sure that they will find a new place within a reasonable time, so it's basically, free money. And those are the people that the company should try to keep as much as it could. While the "give me a task with the perfect description, and I will do it" folks will stay until they are kicked out, as, usually, they are not up to taking the initiative.
That's why I saw how the companies that were changing the rules in the process: "well, it's an offer, but your manager needs to approve that first", and other tricks to be able to reject it for the top performers. Needless to say, it leads to the bad moral.
However, the companies I'm mentioning had way fewer employees than the federal workforce, so the chances are that with that size it's impossible to do it the "right" way.
feoren
> unwise from the company perspective
The goal is to destroy most of these federal agencies, so doing things that are "unwise" for the future of those agencies is exactly the point.
neonarray
Yes, but I believe this is the intent. It's not a matter of it being good for the business when the CEO of said business intentionally wants it to fail.
chairmansteve
The plan seems to be to fire almost all government emoloyees. The only historical parallel I can come up with is the De Baathification program in Iraq 2003.
bgnn
Collapse oc the DDR smd Soviet Union maybe?
9283409232
RAGE is one of the main points of this entire department. Retire All Government Employees.
duxup
Being asked to take a deal that the administration may be offering illegally is a wild situation to be in. Especially when the administration doing so seems to have little regard for the law, and SCOTUS has deemed them above the law to some extent.
Are you making a deal they will actually pay, and could it be that the administration simply chooses to ignore the courts?
manbart
Doubt it... You'd be a fool to think you'd actually get the money
derektank
There's a lot of people that, due to their living situation, wouldn't be able to comply with the new executive order banning work from home. If the choice is between being fired either way, I can see many people opting to take the possibility of a severance while they find alternative work
throwawayguy867
I'm in this situation. I was hired fully remote (and no office to "return" to), many states away from DC and no intention to move (not for an administration that would have no scruples about firing me at any point, for any reason).
Since I'm fairly sure my goose is cooked either way, I am considering doing the deferred resignation thing just to get a few more dollars in my pocket before the inevitable comes.
desumeku
Is this where we're at now? Thinking that the new administration will just openly refuse to pay people's salaries as part of a formal deal?
kgermino
The offer mirrors Elon's offer to Twitter employees and many of them did not receive the money they were promised.
Elon doesn't have the legal authority to make this offer today, it's poorly defined, and not a standard separation policy for federal employees. I'm not saying they won't be paid out, but I would't bet my livelihood on it
neom
I looked into this and I find it kinda confusing. https://employmentlawweekly.com/uncategorized/500-million-se... && https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/McMilli...
madeofpalk
What has the past actions of the administration shown us about trustworthy they are?
This is not where you were now. This is where you were four years ago.
roughly
All of that's handled by the treasury department payment systems, so as long as those are left alone, I'm sure it'll be fine.
ceejayoz
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/...
> Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will "protect your job." But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.
> In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.
> In courtroom testimony, the manager of the general contractor for the Doral renovation admitted that a decision was made not to pay The Paint Spot because Trump “already paid enough.” As the construction manager spoke, “Trump’s trial attorneys visibly winced, began breathing heavily, and attempted to make eye contact” with the witness, the judge noted in his ruling.
dekhn
Yes, that is the most probable outcome.
miltonlost
Do you know who the President and his crony is? Have you seen Musk and Trump lie, repeatedly, about paying invoices and stiffing people? Have you seen Musk not pay his Twitter employees after he took over? Do you have a memory problem?
snakeyjake
>Thinking that the new administration will just openly refuse to pay people's salaries as part of a formal deal?
The chief executive of the new administration is literally and actually widely known for doing that exact thing repeatedly, for decades and decades, up to and including screwing local municipalities who entered into binding legal agreements with him to incur expenses to be repaid in full as part of his campaign.
This is not bias or propaganda it is fact.
eigart
Yes.
9rx
Of course, if they decide to not pay you it won't matter if you took this or tried to keep your job. So you may get a head start and turn your time to searching for a new job now. If they do end up following through with the buyout payments in the end, that is an added bonus.
axus
This is why the deadline is before the next paycheck :P
Molitor5901
They are legally required to. It's already been appropriated by congress. The money is sitting there, budgeted for salaries, waiting for disperse.
rob74
The budget for USAID was also appropriated by Congress, but they still decided to freeze everything "pending review" (instead of at least reviewing while initially leaving things running), and then locked out domestic employees and recalled overseas employees - all without consulting Congress. So they obviously don't care one bit about what they are legally required to do. And why should they, as long as they have the supreme interpreters of laws firmly in their corner?
Brybry
Here's one of the template agreements: especially read #13. I'm not a lawyer but I would have serious concerns. [1]
sitkack
I don't know why you keep repeating this everywhere. It is not a sure thing. And legality has no bearing anymore.
neaden
OK so? Do you think the president has to obey the laws? Will the FBI arrest him if they don't? What do you think the consequence will realistically be?
justin66
The consequence of those people not being paid is that they'd sue the government as a class, win, and then be paid.
scarface_74
Who is going to enforce the law? Trump appointed judges? Even if the lawsuits are successful, our system depends on the Executive branch respecting the verdict.
At least during his last term you had Republicans on both the state and federal levels who weren’t sycophants. They’ve all died, retired or are now kissing the ring.
kgermino
Nope, it's only budgeted through March 14th, noticeably before September 31st
drawkward
This is a very naive comment, given the blatantly unconstitutional behavior that has happened in the last two weeks.
null
sampton
20k represents 1%. The target is 5-10%. The messaging is 100-200k federal layoff is coming.
varsketiz
Since the turover rate per year is 6%, implemented hiring freeze would yield theese results.
bhouston
Which is exactly what Canadian government has been doing for a while now after the service ballooned during the pandemic, e.g.: https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPublicServants/comments/1g9qy...
pixl97
1) You're assuming these leadership clowns are that smart
2) They are targeting particular employees more.
sampton
Does the 6% number includes churn between departments? Unless ICE can absorb 100k+ headcount the number will be much lower this year.
s3r3nity
These tend to work through in stages: fastest ones to accept were already looking, and next up are those that are on the fence, and so on...
The 8-month buyout offer is significantly better than the one-time offer from Clinton in the 90's [1], even adjusting for inflation, so I'd expect that there's a large group of individuals & families that are just taking the time to evaluate the decision.
[https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-the-buyo...]
leoqa
Interesting precedent thanks for sharing.
tootie
They have separately promised $1T or even $2T in cuts and and laying off 200K won't even come close. Not to mention they are offering these as blanket buyouts seemingly without regard for job function so they will inevitably end up needing to hire back some percentage of roles unless (as I suspect) they intend to just stop doing a bunch of critical work.
techapple
Interesting they say their goal is 5-10% when normal attrition is six percent, that means essentially their goal is -6 to 4%
csa
> Interesting they say their goal is 5-10% when normal attrition is six percent, that means essentially their goal is -6 to 4%
Basically, yes.
If they had worked within the existing VSIP (voluntary separation) and VERA (early retirement) systems, maybe by tweaking things like max payouts, they could have almost guaranteed 10%+ by September, imho.
The haphazard and non-standard way they’ve gone about it, however, makes me think that they will be at the low end of their range.
The other possible explanations are:
- they don’t really intend to pay those who resign (e.g., via admin leave status and then having a furlough in March)
- their ultimate goal is to have people not take the deal so that they can just fire with impunity. Imho, this type of reduction will only work for folks on probation (who, imho, are the only ones who should actually consider taking the resignation offer).
numpad0
Not an American, but the reported resignation process of just sending arbitrary content email with subject "resign" to "hr@opm.gov" feels like the real aim is to collect emails and response time data to establish cluster system health metric to determine which nodes can be murdered safely.
It's almost strange to me that this aspect, and stupidity of injecting non-compiling code to human mainframes collective that runs on legalese in an attempt to collect such data, seem to be rarely discussed.
legitster
Now just imagine every future administration does this, and we have more or less returned to the Spoils System through a loophole.
I think the main issue for anyone wanting to take the offer is simply: this was never authorized by congress, so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best. Meanwhile, there's a government funding deadline on March 14, 2025. So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations.
It would be an incredibly generous and nice buyout package, but obviously if it gets torn up after a month it's not that great of a deal.