As the deadline looms for tens of thousands of federal employees to decide whether to take the deferred resignation offer from the Trump administration, Camilla McKinney, an attorney specializing in employment law, told WTOP there are a number of things they want to consider before making a move.
Noting that the offer being made by the Trump administration is unprecedented, McKinney brought up a more typical mechanism to trim the workforce.
McKinney said in the case of reductions in force, or RIFs, “there are certain regulations” that the government has to follow.
“Also, if you are spending taxpayer dollars, it has to be authorized,” she added.
She said there are a number of questions employees and attorneys alike will have, like, “What’s the authorization for this and what’s the funding for the buyout?”
There are also questions about employee privacy, McKinney said, “in terms of collecting information from these employees directly.”
McKinney said a few things make the current situation involving the personnel actions unique.
One, she told WTOP, is that federal employees work under a system designed to protect against political pressure. The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) is intended to protect against political influence on the job.
Once loyalty becomes part of the consideration of government workers, McKinney said, “Then you no longer potentially have a workforce that’s doing the job for Americans,” but instead, decisions could be made to follow a particular political agenda.
“Again, we have these laws to protect federal government employees,” she said, not because of their status, but “because we want them to do their jobs free of pressure and free of being a loyalist.”
McKinney, a partner at the law firm of John Mahoney and her own law practice, McKinney & Associates, said many government employees are covered by the collective bargaining agreements of their respective unions.
“If you’re covered by a collective bargaining agreement, you should talk also to your union, your union rep,” she said.
Some federal employees were placed on leave because they were working on issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.
“I just recently was notified of an employee, who was a DEI employee, and they were terminated, and not pursuant to a RIF but just by a letter,” she said.
In that case, McKinney said, a clear argument could be made that they have rights to go before the MSPB to challenge their termination.
McKinney said that because the deferred resignation offers are so unusual, many may opt to take a wait-and-see approach; but in certain cases, the clock is ticking, with 30-day windows to file appeals.
The bottom line, she said, is that employees will have to look at their own particular circumstances in deciding what action to take and that in most cases, “the Merit System Protection Board have administrative judges who will decide your case.”
However, she added, “Whether or not this administration makes changes to the MSPB and their staffing — that I can’t speak to. We don’t know what’s going to happen down the road.”
“With everything changing day by day, and a lot of these rules and regulations being ignored and not being implemented, there’s obviously no guarantees,” she added.
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