Education Department employees received an email on Friday offering buyouts ahead of what were described as “very significant” layoffs.
The email, sent to all of the department’s employees at 11:03 a.m., urged workers to consider a “one-time offer” of a taxable payment of up to $25,000 if they completed an application to retire or resign by the end of the day on Monday. The email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, noted that employees were receiving the offer before the department underwent “a very significant reduction in force.”
The email appeared to have been briefly recalled on Friday, according to three people who received the original notice. They described it as simply vanishing from their inboxes, causing confusion among employees about the status of any offer.
But a seemingly identical email was sent out again on Friday afternoon, presenting the same choice and giving employees three days to contemplate its terms.
A spokesman for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the offer or ensuing communications.
The link to the application form to apply for the program stayed live and accessible throughout the day, even after the original email appeared to have been pulled back through the department’s email system.
The buyout offer appeared to be legal and based on the Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment Authority, which allows agencies that are downsizing or restructuring to offer one-time payments up to $25,000 to employees who are in “surplus positions or have skills that are no longer needed in the work force.”
But the email on Friday morning, blasted out to all employees as an “urgent announcement” with a strict Monday deadline, came as the Trump administration is moving quickly to carry out far-reaching job cuts across the federal government. That involved an array of tactics including deferred resignation offers, layoffs of probationary employees and earlier efforts to sideline certain employees through administrative leave.
The email noted that the offer was also available to employees who were already planning to retire. An accompanying list of bulleted guidance indicated that employees who took the offer would receive the equivalent of severance pay — which can be minimal for newer hires — or $25,000, depending on which amount was less.
For longstanding employees contemplating retirement, that amounted to essentially a $25,000 bonus to depart more immediately.
It was not immediately clear whether employees at other agencies received a similar offer or whether it was part of a larger effort to speed the pace of downsizing across the government.
Under current guidance from the Office of Personnel Management, voluntary separation programs involve a number of specific prerequisites, such as that workers must have been employed by the executive branch for at least three years. It notes that the authority can be used to “minimize or avoid involuntary separations through the use of costly and disruptive reductions in force.”
The short email to employees on Friday, which appeared to have been floated to all of the department’s staff members, indicated that any resignations or retirements in connection with the offer would take effect on March 31.
It also offered no specifics about the “very significant reduction in force,” or which employees might be targeted and fired if they did not accept the offer.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com