Union sues over Trump buyout offer

The largest federal government employee union is suing the Trump administration to block its buyouts for workers, calling the offer “an arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum which workers may not be able to enforce.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) suit against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said the agency violated the Administrative Procedures Act in swiftly rolling out an offer that they do not currently have the funds to back and have offered conflicting guidance about how it’s structured.

“The Fork Directive is arbitrary and capricious in numerous respects, including that the Directive: (1) fails to consider possible adverse consequences of the Directive provided to millions of federal employees to the continuing functioning of government; (2) offers conflicting information about employees’ rights and obligations if they accept the government’s offer; (3) runs counter to long-standing rules and requirements for federal employees; (4) is contrary to reasoned practices of government restructuring, (5) ignores history and practices around effective workforce reduction, (6) sets an arbitrarily short deadline; and (7) is pretext for removing and replacing government workers on an ideological basis,” the AFGE wrote in its suit.

Dubbed “A Fork in the Road,” OPM has offered nearly all government employees eight months of pay and benefits to leave the workforce if they do not wish to comply with a return to office mandate.

But the process has been plagued by outstanding questions, including how the government plans to make good on a deal that extends well beyond the current government funding plan that only stretches into March.

The suit notes that may also violate the Antideficiency Act, which bars the government from spending beyond what is dictated in its budget and requires it to use federal funding as intended.

The offer has also come with some conflicting guidance. While topline information in emails have said employees will not have to work and can seek other jobs during that time, other messages have stated that in some cases that employees may need to come to work or may be limited in seeking outside employment.

The OPM has sought to assuage workers that they will be paid even if there is a lapse in government funding.

“An employee who has chosen to participate in the deferred resignation program will not be placed at a disadvantage compared to other employees if congressional appropriations lapse. In the event of a partial or complete government shutdown, payments to all affected employees (regardless of whether they accepted the deferred resignation offer) would be temporarily paused,” the agency said in a recent Q&A.

“Upon passage of another appropriations bill, however, affected employees would be eligible for retroactive pay.”

McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson for the OPM, defended the buyouts.

“Union leaders and politicians telling federal workers to reject this offer are doing them a serious disservice. This is a rare, generous opportunity — one that was thoroughly vetted and intentionally designed to support employees through restructuring,” she said in a statement.