215
Federal workers decry Trump attempt to force mass resignations as ‘cruel joke’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
215 points (98.6% liked)
politics
19607 readers
4349 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So, Trump has offered 1 million federal workers the chance to opt to resign within 2 weeks and receive 8 months pay. It's expected around 10% might take that option. That's around 200k employees off the payroll.
That means that those who choose this option receive enough money and time to sort themselves out with new employment. In fact those that quickly find new employment would be getting double pay for over half a year.
why not announce it all at once so there was less confusion among the general public and those affected?
I believe all the relevant government employees were emailed. They have a choice whether to accept or not, so not sure why they would feel anxious. I guess if enough people don't take voluntary resignation then there will eventually follow a wave of compulsory resignations with a less appealing severance package.
As for the general public being informed, I think it's pretty clear that the media would do their best to misinform them as quickly as possible, regardless. Either way it's not particularly important what the man on the street, or the New York Times thinks about it.
So yeah, there is going to be a layoff of 100K... of ... 2.2 MILLION civil service employees, or about 4.5%. That hardly moves the unemployment needle
Honestly it is needed. Government associates do the absolute minimum and some departments are completely unnecessary. The best thing you could ever do is erase them and start over.
The large mass of the feds is fat and lethargic. It needs a good trimming. And truthfully anyone worth their metal will be able to find a job in the civilian sector just fine.
Besides, if you are an employee paid by the taxpayer money and do this:
https://afn.net/opinions/joshua-arnold/2025/01/15/federal-employees-plan-resist-movement-against-their-new-boss/
Then you are not doing your job. Period. Hate Trump or biden, or any politician as much as you want. If you take a job in government its your job to follow the orders by the president, govnernor, mayor, etc. its not your job to decide that politician is so bad you will stop doing your job, or worse make it so no one in your department can get work done. At that point just quit.
There's lots of jobs working for partisan offices if working for a (D) or (R) is a deal breaker for you.
“If President[-elect Donald] Trump gave them a legal order which they thought was bad policy, nearly two-thirds (64%)” of “Federal Government Managers” who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris “would ignore the order and do what they thought was best,”
Republican or Democrat, if you won't do your job because you don't agree with the policy of the politician who won, you should be fired.
And don't get me started on automation
What's wrong with automation?
PLEASE don't get them started. I'm bleeding from my ears after reading that last post.
Lol
Nothing wrong, actually a big promoter, the thing is, the people who complain a lot about:
-not having enough jobs
-salary being too low
If you add automation to the mix, a lot of the people complaining about it will have to, sooner or later, face the reality that a lot of clerical work can be automated leaving large swats of the population who never realized they needed to re-skill, in a job market that for them looks unpredictable.
In this particular case, maybe about 80% of these jobs might be automated in the near future, which will also collapse the idea that, for government to work, it has to be as big and bloated as possible, and prove at the same time that a lean, less expensive and efficient government structure is more desirable in the end.
This will replicate over other verticals. We already have fully automated convenience stores, coffee shops, pizza shops and burger shops. Add a cheap LLM like deep seek to the mix for customer service and you got yourself a standard shop but with no social security loads or expenses. Maybe one human supervisor for each 100 shops or so.
The benefits make economic actors to lean more to the fully automated establishments.
Others, manually managed will keep existing but will be the minority. These will be more expensive.
People who aim for these types of jobs, should be re-skilling in AI and how to operate it, even if it is tangential to their fields, just in case they want to be that human supervisor, or do the maintenance on the service devices used in them.
How would you suggest for people trying to get into these jobs research best methods for maintaining and servicing and general operations of the ai?
There's no statutory authority for this kind of resignation in the federal government. This is a scam, they will not get the good deal.
And from what you've posted I'm pretty sure you have no clue what civil service employees do.
There is no budget for this. Even if there was a budget, the government is only funded until like March. Even if you expected Congress to extend that long enough for the payout, there is still a $25k Max buyout set by OPM.
You would have to be so dumb to take this "deal".
These are public service workers who are having their jobs taken from them. People are losing pentions. Some departments will have all employees laid off and remain in name only (because it takes an act of congress to disband some departments)
Think of who maintains your parks. Think of who provided nessisary demographics and statistics to businesses and universities. Think of who runs GPS and weather satilites. Think of who tests your water and air. Who tests your produce, meat and drugs. The IRS got this letter as well. Their "customer service" branch is probably getting the axe. Who will you call if your tax return is stolen?
The reality is life will worsen for the average American due to these layoffs. This is a rug pull on the public by the billionaire class.
This is wildly inaccurate. It’s not a buyout as you suggest. It’s a ”deferred retirement”- which basically means you quit in 8 months and still get to show up to work between now and then.