‘Every day is chaos.’ California’s federal workers aren’t taking Trump’s resignation offer
On Monday, Maddie received an email from the U.S. Department of Interior inviting her to attend an informational session about an early retirement program. The email, sent from a government address and signed by a DOI director, seemed to Maddie to be another attempt by the Trump administration to push federal workers out of their jobs early.
But Maddie, who asked that her last name be withheld out of fear of retaliation by future employers, is not a federal employee and has never been one of the federal government’s 147,000 California employees.
“You would hope that there’d be some safeguards to prevent random citizens from being able to join government meetings,” she said.
Maddie has applied to federal jobs in the past and participated in a screening call for a workforce recruitment program, though none were with the Interior Department.
The errant email came as millions of federal employees were presented with an offer to take early retirement last week. The deal, if true, said workers could stop working but still receive their salaries until September.
“There was lots of confusion when we first saw it,” said Mark Smith, president of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1. Many workers reported the email as suspicious, thinking it was a phishing attempt.
The email was one of President Donald Trump’s attempts to reduce the federal workforce. It came after Trump demanded federal employees come back to offices five days a week; reclassified employees so they can be more easily fired, and instituted a hiring freeze that union leaders said resulted in previously offered promotions and transfers to be rescinded.
But after receiving the resignation offer from the Trump administration, federal employees in California have coalesced around their frustration. Many perceived the offer — which now has a Monday deadline after a federal judge in Massachusetts delayed the initial Thursday cutoff— as an insult to their work as career civil servants and the oath they took to protect the constitution.
Details about the offer emerged, which indicated that Elon Musk, a “special government employee,” sent a nearly identical email to Twitter employees after he purchased the social media platform. Thousands of workers left the company after he encouraged them to resign.
Musk, the world’s richest man, was installed by Trump to root out fraud and wasteful government spending as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, which is not an official federal agency.
On Wednesday an estimated 600-700 people attended a rally at the California Capitol to protest Trump and Musk’s cost-cutting tactics — one of similar events held around the country.
“People are angry at the administration, people are worried, people are anxious,” said a California supervisor with the Department of Veteran Affairs who declined to share his name out of fear of retaliation. “Every day is chaos.”
‘It’s very insulting,’ California union president syas
Roberta Beggs was quick to clarify that the resignation offer is not a “buyout.”
The president of NFFE’s Local 1450 said the email is offering federal employees deferred resignation ahead of possible terminations and reductions in force. It’s a threat, she said.
In a statement, the Office of Personnel Management declined to share the number of people who had accepted the offer. The office planned to wait until after the deadline to share that number. The department said it did not have a target number for how many employees it hoped would resign.
Various media outlets have reported ten of thousands of employees have taken the federal government up on its offer, but Beggs noted that figure is less impressive considering 115,000 employees quit federal service in fiscal year 2022, according to OPM data.
Two of the largest unions representing this workforce — the American Federation of Government Employees and NFFE — advised members not to take the bait. California Attorney General Rob Bonta urged federal employees to take the unions’ advice and “to be very cautious” of the offer.
“It’s very insulting,” said James Mudrock, president of AFGE’s Local 1230, which represents airport security officers in California. “It shows a complete lack of respect or interest or care for what we do.”
When the resignation letter was originally released, it stated that military personnel, U.S. Postal Service workers and employees in immigration enforcement and national security were not eligible to resign.
Mudrock said it wasn’t clear, until days later, that Transportation Security Administration officers could not take the administration’s offer either.
Supervisors at the Veterans Administration said as of Thursday they still did not have official confirmation as to which employees were eligible for the offer. The VA did not respond to questions about the resignation offers and who was eligible by publication time.
Beggs said since the resignation offers went out, there’s been an increase in union participation. Attendance at her last monthly meeting with members was four times the average size. She said colleagues who previously eschewed the union, preferring to reap the benefits without paying dues, are now contributing members.
Adding to federal workers’ frustrations is Trump ending remote work options for federal workers. Beggs said the administration is telling fully remote employees, who were working from home even before the pandemic, that they should expect them to come into federal offices in the near future.
Ironically, Beggs said nearly all of the duty stations, where federal employees report to work, in her unit’s region are at 90% capacity. There’s not enough room for all the remote workers to go back, she said.
A fierce resistance against the resignation offer has sprouted up since the email went out just over a week ago. Beggs recalled that one colleague who was nearing retirement, and might have considered such an offer under different circumstances, isn’t taking it because she wants to leave on “my own terms.”
“Most people are saying, ‘They’re gonna have to drag me out of here,’” Beggs said.
California VA workers wary of offer
The VA, with nearly 39,000 employees, is the largest federal employer in California.
VA supervisors and clinicians who provide medical care, housing services and other benefits to veterans living in the state, said they don’t believe the government will be able to fulfill the promises made in the generous offer.
The messaging has been unprofessional, insulting and harassing, said several VA employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. All of them said they didn’t know anyone who was planning to resign.
“We wake up every day with a new email trying to tell us to quit. Why? We don’t want to,” a VA supervisor said.
Employees who considered taking the offer when it was first presented, changed their minds after subsequent emails seemed to insult the work of civil servants.
After the initial email, OPM sent a second message encouraging federal workers to move from “lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
Those successive messages felt like the administration was trying to bully employees into resigning, one employee said.
“And I was like, ‘You know what? Forget it.’ I would rather just stay here and hold the line,” he said.
Smith, the president of Local 1, which represents VA employees in California, said his members were angered that the Human Resources Department of the federal government suggested their work caring for veterans was unproductive.
Nurses, social workers and chaplains who work in VA hospitals don’t choose to work with veterans to get rich or have an easy job, he said.
“Our members find purpose in coming to work here,” he said.
When asked by employees if they were eligible to accept the early retirement offer, supervisors said they couldn’t guarantee that rank and file workers wouldn’t be marked “AWOL” for not showing up to work. Furthermore, supervisors couldn’t assure employees that the federal government’s offer for months of paid leave would actually be fulfilled.
On Tuesday, the American Federation of Government Employee filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts seeking a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration offer, arguing the policy is unlawful because federal officials cannot authorize expenditures, such as paid leave, before Congress secures an appropriation. On Thursday, the judge granted the union’s request to push the deadline until next week. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Monday.
“What people don’t understand about federal employees, they’re very dedicated to the mission that they’re carrying out and they take their job seriously,” said Beggs, the NFFE local president. “They’re patient and they’re stubborn, but, at this time, they’re also being threatened.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 12:32 PM.
