This comes as Trump ordered changes to make it easier to terminate tens of thousands of federal workers who make or advocate for policy, a move that experts said is meant to strengthen his control over the executive branch. This week, some probationary employees with one or two years of service in some federal agencies also received an email reminding them they can be immediately fired because they have weaker job protections than co-workers.
About 152,000 civil service employees are based in California. Among non-postal civil agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs employs the most people — nearly 500,000, according to the Pew Research Center.
OPM said employees who agree to deferred resignation won’t be expected to work except in rare cases, according to a frequently asked questions webpage. But the program’s language varies in different documents, and it remains unclear whether staffers would continue to work, be assigned to other jobs, or keep getting a paycheck, said Bethany Dreyfus, president of AFGE Local 1236, which represents EPA employees based in San Francisco and Las Vegas.
“Employees at EPA and at other federal agencies, they’re in these jobs because they’re committed to serving the American people and the mission of their agencies,” said Dreyfus, adding that EPA workers are engaged in vital tasks such as helping to clean up hazardous materials from the Los Angeles fires and training first responders on how to react to potential radiation emergencies.
“This idea that they would just take a deferred retirement, whatever that might mean, is distressing and a bit offensive to what they’ve committed their careers to,” she added.
An employee at the Department of the Interior in the Bay Area worried about the greater impact on critical government functions for the public if the administration massively slashes the workforce. He wondered what would happen to the research and other positions needed to alert the public about a dangerous earthquake, hurricane or volcano eruption coming.
“There doesn’t even seem to be recognition for the fact that we are all doing jobs that have civic value and are not things that the private sector does or would ever do because there’s no financial incentive,” he said. “We are doing this because we want to work on science for the public good. That makes the political overtones of this that much more painful.”