JD'S Memes



This following information is from The "Government Executive" Federal web site.

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At least some federal agencies have placed their employees working on diversity and inclusion issues on paid administrative leave as the Trump administration is instructing them to begin the layoffs process immediately.



Agencies must deliver their plans for instituting the reductions in force by the end of January, but Office of Personnel Management acting Director Charles Ezell told agencies in a new memorandum they “can and should” start sending out the layoff notices to impacted workers now. It is not yet clear exactly how many employees will be impacted by the RIFs, but it will affect anyone in a federal office that focused exclusively on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility issues.



The Veterans Affairs Department on Monday reported that it had placed 60 such employees on paid administrative leave, the first step for the soon-to-be laid off employees as laid out in earlier OPM guidance. Those employees collectively made $8 million annually, VA said. They are all still receiving their full pay and benefits while they sit on leave.



“We are proud to have abandoned the divisive DEI policies of the past and pivot back to VA’s core mission,” Morgan Ackley, a VA spokesperson, said. “We look forward to reallocating the millions of dollars the department was spending on DEI programs and personnel to better serve the men and women who have bravely served our nation.”



OPM has received lists of the relevant employees from agencies and is passing that data on to the White House, Government Executive has learned. An exhaustive list with detailing the number of impacted employees governmentwide was not made available, though VA’s 60 employees represents about 0.01% of its workforce. Other agencies contacted by Government Executive did not make the data available.



“The Department of the Interior is expeditiously executing the president’s executive order,” a department spokesperson said.



Agencies notified employees last week of their placement on administrative leave and told them that their programs "divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars and resulted in shameful discrimination.” They were told not to work or report to their offices while on leave.



All federal workers received notification that DEIA initiatives were halted and told that any effort to obscure such efforts, or a failure to disclose any concealment, would result in disciplinary action.



In preparation for the directive, OPM took steps this week to reverse President Biden-era rules that limited the use of administrative leave.



Federal statute allows for RIFs when they are rooted in specific activities, such as a reorganization, a lack of work or a shortage of funds. Still, federal employees subjected to layoffs have appeal rights to the Merit Systems Protection Board.



Separately from the DEI eradication push, OPM has also tasked agencies with delivering lists of every employee hired recently and are therefore still in their probationary period. Those employees can be fired easily without normal civil service hurdles, opening the possibility that the Trump administration is going to dismiss them en masse.



Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency is helping to spearhead efforts to shrink agency workforces, visited OPM’s headquarters on Friday. Amanda Scales, a former employee of Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, is OPM’s new chief of staff and has been listed as the point of contact for both the DEIA layoff and probationary period list memos.
 
Government Executive
Federal agencies have two weeks to submit their plans to ensure as many employees as possible are reporting to their offices or duty stations, the Trump administration said on Monday, calling on executive branch leadership to “expeditiously implement” the president’s directive to limit telework.

The plans will include a review of collective bargaining agreements to determine how to bring unionized employees back to their offices, whose telework, in many cases, is contractually protected. The reviews will examine “the process by which agencies put new CBAs into place” under the Biden administration, though it is unclear what legal recourse Trump officials will have in unwinding those agreements.

The new guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management follows comments from President Trump this weekend that any federal worker who is not reporting to their duty stations full time will be fired.

‘You have to show up to work, basically,” Trump said. “You have to show up to work. You have to go to your office and work. Otherwise you’re not going to have a job.”

Agencies last week already notified their workforces of their intentions to ensure all eligible employees are working in person, per OPM’s initial guidance. At the General Services Administration, for example, acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian—one of the few temporary leaders President Trump brought in from outside government—said the agency is committed to full implementation of its new policy within 30 days and he is setting up a task force to evaluate physical space and IT needs. His goal, he said, was to ensure GSA has “the most collaborative (and fun) work environment across all locations.”

“The agency's telework policy has been revised in accordance with the new guidance and we are working through the process of reissuance,” Ehikian said. “The new policy removes routine telework and remote work categories, except in qualifying or compelling circumstances.”

Similar emails have been sent in agencies throughout government.

Only employees with disability, qualifying medical condition or other compelling reasons certified by the agency head are not considered covered by that directive, OMB acting Director Matthew Vaeth and OPM acting Director Charles Ezell wrote in Monday’s guidance, meaning they do not consider employees with telework-protected CBAs as exempted.

The forthcoming agency implementation plans, due Feb. 7, will detail the steps and milestones for revising telework agreements, a timeline for ensuring all employees are conducting in-person “as expeditiously as possible,” a detailed process for determining if employees have medical conditions that allow them to work remotely and the criteria for determining other exemptions. Agencies will also determine associated costs with finding workplaces for employees who have been working remotely on a full-time basis and whether relocation benefits can be used for those who must move more than 50 miles. OPM and OMB instructed agencies to use federally owned or leased spaces for all employees who will no longer telework, though they acknowledged in some cases agencies may be “adding net-new space to the federal real estate portfolio.”

Many agencies in recent years have undergone transformations to realign their workspaces to the new reality of less in-person work, including by establishing “hoteling” for desk space and piloting interagency coworking spaces. Agencies and GSA, which manages the federal government’s real estate, may now have to rework those designs to accommodate full-time in-person attendance.

OPM and OMB directed agencies to identify any risks, barriers or resource constraints to complying with Trump’s order, including availability of office space and budgetary concerns, as well as a plan to overcome them.

The use of telework by federal agencies has generally grown since Congress codified its authorization in the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act, but its use picked up significantly during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike Trump, congressional Republicans have largely sought to roll back telework use to pre-pandemic levels rather than attempting to eliminate it entirely.

Telework’s use is far from universal within the federal government, despite some assertions to the contrary. About 80% of the federal work hours are currently spent in-person, according to a recent OMB review, and more than half of federal employees do not telework at all because their jobs are not conducive to it. Of those who do telework, employees on average spent about 60% of their time on site.

In the new guidance, the Trump administration told agencies to prioritize in-person work for agency headquarters staff. Bringing into duty stations remote workers more than 50 miles from a current agency office “may present unique challenges,” Vaeth and Ezell said. They added that employees working on similar functions should, where possible, work in the same spaces to “promote effective collaboration and management.”

 
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