Federal Workers’ Unions Are Waging the Fight of Their Lives
On Monday, a federal judge further delayed a deferred resignation proposal by the Trump administration. This came two weeks after the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to two million federal employees granting just nine days to determine whether to stay in their jobs without guaranteed safety and a commitment to be “loyal,” or resign and stay on the government’s payroll through the end of September, even though Congress has not yet appropriated funds for the federal government past March.
On Wednesday, a federal judge lifted the pause on the program, arguing that the unions representing federal employees that brought the suit did not have standing, because they were not directly affected by the administration’s actions, but instead were “challenging a policy that affects others, specifically executive branch employees.” The offer was immediately closed, with a spokesperson for OPM claiming that around 75,000 people had taken advantage of the buyout—far fewer than what Trump and Musk had hoped to entice.
For employees like those in Smith’s union, the net result has been chaos, with each day bringing fresh—and often conflicting—updates and directives. At first, union members believed they would be subject to a hiring freeze, although they learned later in January that the health workers in the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, would be exempted. The email from the OPM, which bore the same “Fork in the Road” subject line that employees at X—formerly Twitter—received soon after Musk’s takeover of that firm, sowed further confusion: According to Smith, some workers simply reported the initial email as a phishing attempt, because they believed it was a scam.