Top officials at the Education Department told staff members Wednesday that if they accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation package, the education secretary may later cancel it and employees would not have any recourse, potentially leaving them without promised pay.
The Office of Personnel Management sent notices last week to federal employees that if they resign by Thursday, they could continue receiving pay and benefits until the end of September. The Trump administration hopes to get as much as 10% of the workforce to quit as part of a plan to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
But three Education Department officials told NBC News that Rachel Oglesby, the department’s new chief of staff, and Jacqueline Clay, its chief human capital officer, described significant caveats to the so-called Fork in the Road offer in an all-staff meeting held over Zoom on Wednesday. The officials did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.
The education secretary would be allowed to rescind the agreement, or the government could stop paying, and employees who took the deferred resignation package would waive all legal claims, the three officials said they were told in the meeting. The three employees say they have seen only sample resignation agreements so far and would need to agree to resign by Thursday evening before they could see the actual terms of their separations.
“It sounded like a commercial for a used car dealership, like, ‘Act now, one day only,’” said a department official who attended the meeting.
Spokespersons for the Education Department and the OPM said that was false, pointing to a memo that says the resignation offer’s “assurances are binding on the government. Were the government to backtrack on its commitments, an employee would be entitled to request a rescission of his or her resignation.”
However, the memo includes a sample agreement that includes a clause that agency heads retain the sole discretion to rescind the deals and that employees waive the right to challenge them before the Merit Systems Protection Board "or any other forum.”
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A sample deferred resignation agreement specific for Education Department employees includes similar language, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
Across the federal government, pressure from the Trump administration to take the buyout offer has been mounting. In an email to federal employees Tuesday following up on the original buyout proposal, the OPM wrote: “Please note the Deferred Resignation program (‘Fork in the Road’) expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday February 6th. There will not be an extension of this program.”
More than 40,000 people have taken the buyout offer so far, according to a White House official, out of a federal workforce of over 2 million people.
There is deep concern among federal workers that the Trump administration’s buyout offer could turn out to be a bait-and-switch, with the government potentially failing to hold up its end of the bargain. Education Department managers’ comments only worsened those concerns, the three employees said.
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“The morale is pretty bad,” a second official said. “One of the managers I work with just said he hasn’t seen any emails in the last four hours since the meeting ended, because everybody just kind of had the life sucked out of them.”
A third employee described the tone of the call as angry, as workers put questions in Zoom’s chat box but then did not get responses.
The unusual buyout offer has upended Washington amid a flurry of executive orders and maneuvers by Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, an office within the White House. In just two weeks, Trump and Musk have launched a sweeping effort to remake the federal government, slash spending and even eliminate some agencies.
Many Democrats and some Republicans say Trump and Musk are violating constitutional limits on the presidency in ways that are unlawful and that are precipitating a constitutional crisis.
Some labor unions for federal workers have sued to stop the deferred resignation program, arguing that the Trump administration does not have legal authority to offer such buyouts. Federal government labor unions and Democratic state attorneys general have warned federal workers that they may never receive the promised resignation benefits and characterized the offers as an attempt to intimidate them into quitting.
Trump has nominated Linda McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO and head of the Small Business Administration in his first administration, to be education secretary. No confirmation hearing is scheduled yet.
Other staffing changes coming to the Education Department may arrive before McMahon does. The department expects to conduct layoffs, known as Reductions in Force, the three department officials said they were told during Wednesday’s meeting. Oglesby, the chief of staff, and Clay, the human capital officer, did not say when those will take place or which offices will be hit hardest during the meeting.
Education Department staff members will also need to go into the office daily by Feb. 24. Clay told staff members that department leaders are working to find another federal building for remote employees to work from within 50 miles of their homes.
Trump has said he wants to eliminate the Education Department, which would fulfill a longtime dream of the Republican base but is supposed to take an act of Congress to achieve. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the White House is weighing executive action that could dismantle the department in a piecemeal fashion, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
