
The Great Resignation, Trump-Style
Do you work for the federal government? From home? And are you less-than-excited about the prospect of getting up two hours earlier than the job technically requires so you can dress up in the drabbest of drab, charcoal-grey business attire for an otiose commute to the physical bureaucracy, where you'll spend the next eight hours doing exactly the same thing you would've done at home (i.e., perpetuating people's Kafka nightmares), just peevishly, only to waste another two hours reverse-commuting
I wonder where the money comes for the buyout?
Is this why the IG’s were fired?
Does not congress have to allocate money for a buyout?
Seems like more power than any man can handle has been wielded.
No new funds for buyout needed. The money is there to pay them, with regular paychecks already committed, through September. It’s a deferred resignation… workers stop working now, keep getting paychecks. Only the work they did stops. Those who stay pick up the slack, or the slack piles up, breaking things. Move fast and break things, said some billionaire, I think.
And, of course, those paychecks will keep coming for those who Reply Yes, I’m certain. Just like Elon when he pulled this move on the Twitter employees, DJT would never renege and stop paying the losers who left.
Come October, all the people who took the early payout will be back saying that they never intended to give up their jobs and that HR never explained to them what was at stake, and that the federal employee handbook doesn’t mention anything about giving up a government job by typing “resign” on a cell phone.
You should definitely start replying to every annoying email you get with just the word “Resign”.
“I love your report, but I’m really made about your take on Gaza or Russia or something, blah blah blah threatening to cancel my subscription!”
Reply
Resign
Send
I would expect many would come back in October as contractors with similar pay but no benefits. That is what you often see in the real world.
That has been the experience of many I know. The reduction in force works for about 6 months but then whatever program or project needed help was addressed via consultant contracts or rehires. And during that 6 months many positions were consolidated among the underutilized talented staff who ended up with more pay, responsibility, and more interesting work. Programs considered non essential were scraped.Never looked back with any regrets. Could happen here.
Living in a large military area I can tell you the civil service that supports the military has absolutely been included in this buyout offer. The people who, ya know, build and maintain the Atlantic Fleet, suddenly walking off the job with 8 months pay; is going to have national security impacts.
The legality of this move is also in question, at this point in time the only legally allowed period for federal civilian administrative leave is 10 days. This decision seems to be a response to the court challenges of the Schedule F executive order. If federal workers were to take this “deal” but it is not legally supportable, they would be effectively voiding their federal workforce protections. Which is probably the objective given who’s negotiating the “deal”.
It’s been 9 days and we’ve seen Medicaid go offline for the first time in 60 years, military contracts get haulted for an indefinite period of time, and now the federal workforce get a legally dubious buyout offer. If this were a movie about how to f*ck up a government, it would be considered too unrealistic to watch. Isn’t it GREAT?!
Musk did this with X. He is still bleeding money. It wasn’t a direct business profit improvement process, it was a political tool development process to use as leverage across business landscapes, huge return on investment – for sure, pure opinion LOL
Are there similarities to the end game of The Great Resignation? Letting my dystopia mind wonder, scary!
I have no doubt there are areas of the government staffed by a number of people close to retirement, what happens when they all decide to leave? Also, can you imagine being one of the people who needs the job, what kind of workplace are you left with? Interesting to see what happens.