US Agencies Offer Staff new Buyouts Ahead Of Trump’s Layoff Deadline

Agencies using lump-sum payments, early retirement program to cut federal employees

March 13 is due date to submit plans for massive layoffs

Workers would get buyout payment of as much as $25,000

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Buyout program less susceptible to legal challenge

By Alexandra Alper, Tim Reid, Marisa Taylor and Nathan Layne

March 11 (Reuters) – Multiple federal government agencies are turning to early retirement programs to minimize headcount as they scramble to satisfy President Donald Trump’s Thursday deadline for them to send strategies for a second round of mass layoffs.

The Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services, including its Fda, are among the companies which have offered lump-sum payments of as much as $25,000 before tax to workers who consent to leave their jobs.

The buyout provides, integrated with another program that reduces eligibility requirements for early retirement, are being embraced as a lower-friction method to help satisfy the Thursday deadline, human resource professionals at a number of federal firms informed Reuters.

The Trump administration has been grappling with myriad suits after it fired countless probationary workers in a very first wave of mass layoffs and took apart whole departments like USAID, the U.S. humanitarian aid agency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which safeguards Americans versus unscrupulous loan providers.

All U.S. federal government agencies have been purchased to come up with large-scale layoff strategies by Thursday as part of Trump’s extraordinary campaign to overhaul the federal government. Among his top advisors, the tech billionaire Elon Musk, is leading that effort with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

The General Services Administration, which handles the government’s home portfolio, is also looking for approval to use the buyout payments to workers, according to an e-mail sent out by its acting head to staff on Monday and seen by Reuters. The Securities and Exchange Commission has actually already provided perks of approximately $50,000, Reuters reported.

Human resource and public governance specialists stated the appeal of the buyout program, called voluntary separation reward payments, is that it is voluntary and less vulnerable to legal obstacles. It also needs workers who have accepted the offer to repay the cash if they take another federal government job within 5 years.

“If your technique is to get as many individuals out the door voluntarily, that lowers the risk of court orders and opposition to you in the long run,” stated Don Moynihan, a public law professor at the University of Michigan.

OPM STILL WAITING FOR PLANS

Only a couple of companies have actually telegraphed through media leaks the number of employees they plan to cut in the 2nd stage of layoffs. They include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is aiming to cut more than 80,000 employees, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is to cut 1,029 personnel.

Despite the looming deadline, no agency has actually yet submitted its job-cutting plan to OPM, the government’s personnels department that is collating the data, a person acquainted with the matter told Reuters. OPM decreased to comment.

OPM itself has used lump-sum payments to some 650 OPM workers, according to another individual with knowledge of the matter. Employees were provided till March 12 to react.

At the General Services Administration, employees were notified on Monday that OPM had actually greenlit a plan to offer an early retirement program to all eligible staff members.

“I encourage each of you to consider your alternatives as we move on,” GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian wrote in an email seen by Reuters. “The brand-new GSA will be slimmer, more effective and laser-focused on effectiveness and high-value results.”

On March 10, the HR department of the Fda sent an e-mail to all its 19,000 employees announcing a Friday, March 14, deadline to choose into a VSIP. Those who accept would need to retire by April 19.

“There will be no extensions,” specifies the email, examined by Reuters and signed by Tania Tse, director of the FDA’s Office of Human Capital Management.

Late on Monday, HHS sweetened its previous VSIP deal by including that employees accepting it would get two months of full pay in addition to the reward, according to a copy of the email seen by Reuters.

Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union which represents 110,000 federal government workers, stated the Trump administration was using “a genuine program to more damage the abilities of companies to finish their mission.”

OPM declined to react to Lenkart’s comments. (Reporting by Alexandra Alper, Tim Reid, Marisa Taylor and Nathan Layne; Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Wallis)