Labor Department to Lose 20% of Staff to Resignation Offers (1)

Nearly one in five workers at the US Department of Labor opted to leave their jobs later this year as part of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, according to two DOL employees briefed on the matter.

More than 2,700 of the DOL’s 14,578 employees agreed to voluntarily separate from the agency under the exit offer, which allows federal employees to receive pay and benefits through September if they resign, the employees said.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer reopened the program for DOL staff earlier this month after it was first launched in January, warning that reductions in force at the agency were forthcoming.

“My goal is to provide as many options and as much information as possible to enable informed decision-making regarding your career and your future,” Chavez-DeRemer said in the email at the time.

Between the January and April voluntary exit offers, close to 20% of all DOL employees decided to take part in the program, agency staffers were told in multiple meetings.

Worker advocates and employment attorneys have warned that any cuts to DOL staff could hurt the agency’s ability to enforce child labor, minimum wage, family leave, or other worker protections, resulting in fewer inspections and fines for businesses covered by the agency.

The deferred resignation program, which was sent to all federal employees in an email infamously titled “Fork in the Road,” is part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce and was initially opened up to federal employees shortly after he took office.

But in recent weeks, workers at multiple federal agencies, including the Labor, Defense, Transportation, Agriculture, and Energy departments, received renewed buyout offers requesting that staff opt-in by various deadlines in April.

Unions representing federal workers have challenged the program in federal court. The American Federation of Government Employees and two other unions amended their February lawsuit against the initial buyout program to include the new offer sent out to multiple agencies in late March and early April. The federal judge overseeing the case previously allowed the Trump administration to continue implementing the program, after finding that the unions failed to show standing to sue.

The mass exodus of staff at the DOL follows earlier efforts by the Trump administration to terminate probationary employees at the DOL’s Women’s Bureau, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Disability Employment Policy, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Employee Benefits Security Administration, and the Bureau of International Labor Affairs. Many of those employees were reinstated in March following a separate lawsuit filed by unions representing government workers.