Demonstrators collect outdoors of the Workplace of Personnel Administration in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7 to protest federal layoffs and demand the termination of Elon Musk from the Division of Authorities Effectivity.
Bryan Dozier/Center East Photographs/AFP through Getty Photographs
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Bryan Dozier/Center East Photographs/AFP through Getty Photographs
A federal government-wide electronic mail asking workers “What did you do final week?” plunged staff and businesses right into a weekend of confusion and conflicting directives.
Billionaire White Home adviser Elon Musk mentioned failure to answer can be taken as resignation. However some division officers told their employees they may maintain off on responding.
Including to the confusion is earlier steering from the Workplace of Personnel Administration (OPM), the company that despatched the broad request, saying that responses to such mass emails had been “voluntary.”
Federal staff resurfaced the OPM steering after they acquired Saturday’s electronic mail, signaling their newest objection to adjustments pushed by Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity.
Musk teased the OPM discover Saturday afternoon, posting on his social media site X that “all federal workers will shortly obtain an electronic mail requesting to know what they acquired achieved final week.”
The chief of the DOGE initiative additionally mentioned “failure to reply shall be taken as a resignation.”
Many federal staff are lined by civil service protections that stop them from being fired with out trigger, and the precise textual content of the e-mail despatched from an OPM handle didn’t embody the ultimatum. Workers had been requested to answer with “approx. 5 bullets of what you completed final week and cc your supervisor” by Monday 11:59 p.m. ET.
The temporary request would seem counter to a privacy impact assessment OPM printed Feb. 5 that mentioned any mass electronic mail despatched from a government-wide electronic mail system would “explicitly” state participating with the e-mail can be voluntary.
The OPM evaluation, printed in response to a lawsuit difficult the Trump administration’s implementation of the e-mail system, states seven totally different occasions that any response to the mass emails are “voluntary.” The federal government-wide electronic mail system was additionally used for the “fork in the road” deferred resignation provide.
“The Worker Response Information is explicitly voluntary,” the evaluation reads. “The person federal authorities workers can decide out just by not responding to the e-mail.”
The evaluation notes that there’s a danger that “people won’t understand their response is voluntary,” a dynamic that rapidly performed out throughout the federal government within the hours after OPM’s Saturday electronic mail.
OPM didn’t instantly reply to NPR’s request for touch upon Sunday about whether or not the e-mail asking staff “What did you do final week?” aligned with the Feb. 5 steering about voluntary responses.
OPM had mentioned in an earlier assertion that the emails are “a part of the Trump Administration’s dedication to an environment friendly and accountable federal workforce,” and that “businesses will decide any subsequent steps.”
Many supervisors and businesses instructed their workers to carry off on responding to the OPM electronic mail, in response to emails reviewed by NPR, like a directive from new FBI Director Kash Patel that the company would evaluation its personal processes first. The FBI electronic mail was confirmed by a person on the bureau who is not approved to talk publicly.
On Sunday, the Division of Protection instructed its workers to pause any response to the OPM electronic mail, in response to a Pentagon electronic mail seen by NPR.
There are additionally questions in regards to the legality of the request from OPM, which performs many human assets features for the federal authorities.
Have info you need to share in regards to the ongoing adjustments throughout the federal authorities? Attain out to Stephen Fowler by way of encrypted communications on Sign at stphnfwlr.25.
“The [“What did you do last week?”] electronic mail fails to establish any authorized authority allowing OPM to demand the requested info,” Everett Kelley, nationwide president of the American Federation of Authorities Workers, wrote in a letter to OPM’s acting director on Sunday. “OPM’s actions battle with legal guidelines delegating the authority for the administration of federal workers to their respective businesses and don’t comport with OPM’s personal laws and steering”
And although Musk wrote on X that responding to the OPM electronic mail can be easy and simple, Kelley mentioned in her letter that she has “acquired quite a few studies from devoted civil servants, together with those that take care of our veterans and safeguard our nation, expressing frustration over the e-mail’s tone and intent. Reasonably than fostering professionalism and respect for his or her work, this rapidly written electronic mail left many feeling undervalued and intimidated.”
NPR’s Andrea Hsu, Tom Bowman and Ryan Lucas contributed reporting.
