'Probably a scam': Federal employees reject Trump buyout, say they’re 'not going anywhere'

01 Feb 2025, 12:01 by https://www.facebook.com/17108852506 · AlterNet

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he signs an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 31, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Carl Gibson
February 01, 2025MSN

Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify that Randy Erwin is the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump's administration sent an email to federal workers asking them to quit in exchange for several months' pay. But many federal employees are wary of the offer.

That's according to a recent CNN article, which reported that workers throughout several federal agencies are hesitant to take the president at his word. After Trump's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) offered millions of federal employees pay through September if they voluntarily left their positions, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) warned that the Trump administration is legally unable to follow through on its promise given that Congress has only appropriated enough funding to keep federal agencies funded through mid-March.

"Employees should not take the Program at face value," the AFGE cautioned, adding that the OPM's email offered no guarantee that workers who quit "will receive the benefits that the Program purports to offer."

Stephen Miller, who is Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, said without offering any evidence that "a significant number of federal workers have accepted the buyout offer." But several workers told CNN that they have no plan to accept the offer, which expires on Thursday, February 6.

“They’re trying to change everything overnight. They’re trying to reinvent the government, and I don’t think they can do it," one unnamed U.S. Department of Agriculture employee told the network. "I retire by 60. I have my 25 years. I’m vested. I’m not going anywhere."

Outside of the AFGE, other unions representing federal workers are also skeptical of the buyout offer. Doreen Greenwald, who is the national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the OPM's letter was "written in a very negative tone, in a threatening manner," and that the administration "provided no clarity on what was being offered."

"There were no answers provided in that document, and so we had to provide that information to our members to protect them," she said.

Randy Erwin, who is the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, also warned his members against accepting the offer. He called it "a scare tactic designed to pressure federal workers into quitting" and that the proposal to pay them through the fall was "illegal and unenforceable."

"Unlike structured programs that the federal government offered in the past to decrease the number of federal employees, this maneuver is intended to panic civil servants into accepting what seems like a sweet deal but is probably a scam," Erwin said.

Firing federal workers en masse will likely be easier said than done. Despite Trump and billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — who Trump has made his government efficiency czar — promising to hollow out the federal workforce, President Joe Biden's OPM implemented new protections for the civil service last spring. The rule was explicitly designed to "safeguard federal employees from political firings" and could not be easily rolled back.

“An executive order would not have impact with this regulation in place,” a senior Biden official told CNN in April. “A future administration would have to go through a new regulatory process, which would also entail like explaining specifically through that rulemaking process why a different rule is better than the existing regulations that OPM (the Office of Personnel Management) finalized and are announced... and how that new approach was consistent with the law.”

Click here to read CNN's full report.