What does Trump’s ‘deferred resignation’ email mean for SC’s federal employees?
An email with the mysterious subject line “a fork in the road” has sown confusion in the country’s federal workforce.
The message, which came from an unfamiliar email address and sent to roughly two million civilian federal employees, gave them the opportunity to opt into “deferred resignation” — voluntarily quitting in exchange for eight months of pay.
All they have to do was reply with to email with the word “resign” by Feb. 6.
It has caused confusion among South Carolina’s 24,525 federal employees.
“We were not prepared at all,” said Tatishka Thomas, an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs and a vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees where she oversees a district including South Carolina. “We’re muddling through it just like every federal agency that received the email.”
“The American people should know this is not the way you make the government run efficiently,” Thomas said.
Federal employees in South Carolina represent a small percentage of the state’s workforce and only approximately 1% of the total federal workforce. But they are employed at key agencies, performing vital tasks.
Among them them are employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, and Defense; the Congaree National Park, the National Weather Service, and the Savannah River Site, a 310-square-mile nuclear weapons facility in Aiken County that has been active since the 1950s.
The message offering the “deferred resignation,” which would be dated to Sept. 30, is part of a drive led by Elon Musk, a billionaire supporter of President Donald Trump, to trim the federal government.
While most of 2.3 million federal employees are eligible to resign, it does not extend to all federal employees. Agency heads may make exception and military personnel, U.S. Postal Service employees, and people working in immigration enforcement and national security are exempt, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
According to the White House, most of the 2.3 million federal workers are eligible for the buyout incentive.
According to reporting by The New York Times, language in the message, including the use of the phrase “a fork in the road,” mirrors messages that Musk sent when he took over Twitter and re-branded it as X. Musk has said that he cut as much as 80% of Twitter’s staff after he took over the company in 2022.
Fidelity, one of the world’s largest investment managers who helped Musk buy Twitter, has seen the value of its investment in the company decline 79% since Musk took over.
“Department of Government Efficiency”
Musk, who Trump appointed to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency,” has said that he plans to cut the federal workforce by 10%, saving the federal government $100 billion. Trump has also consistently described some government employees as members of the “deep state” who are arranged in opposition to his agenda.
While choosing to resign is a “personal choice” to be made by employees, Thomas said, she expressed concern the administration might not be beholden to the promise of eight months pay. With funding for the federal government set to run out on March 14, Thomas said, her employee organization was concerned that workers who opted to resign might not be fully paid.
“They’d have no recourse,” Thomas said.
The email offering employees the choice to resign came directly from an unfamiliar email address, “hr@opm.gov.” Normally, human resources efforts are coordinated through individual agencies and not directly from the the Office of Personnel Management, the government agency that coordinates human resources administration and policy across the federal government.
“How it’s written in the email raises some questions in regards to the legitimacy of whether these are legal buyouts,” Thomas said.
The email describes how a “reformed” federal workforce will be built around four pillars: a return to office for all federal employees, a “performance culture,” a “more streamlined and flexible workforce” and “enhanced standards of conduct” to ensure that employees are “reliable, loyal, trustworthy.”