As of this writing, around 40,000 federal workers have taken a buyout offer—which entails eight months of pay and benefits through September if they resign before a deadline which ends today, on February 6 at 11:59 pm. This is the latest in Trump’s attempts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce. Trump’s administration has warned some federal workers that they could be furloughed if they do not accept the buyout offer.
These are part of a series of attacks on the federal workforce—beginning with a federal hiring freeze, an end to remote work, and the reclassification of thousands of positions, all of which Trump implemented on his first day in office. Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal workforce have raised the alarm that key social services could be impacted—in particular Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which need to be administered by federal workers.
The federal government is the nation’s largest employer, employing around 2.4 million people, a number which does not include uniformed military personnel and US Postal Service employees. For comparison, Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, employs around 1.6 million workers.
According to some, these attacks on federal workers are part of an attempt by Trump to “install whomever he pleases based on favoritism and loyalty to his administration,” according to the American Postal Workers’ Union. Trump has threatened at many turns to privatize the US Postal Service. Trump’s policies could “effectively dismantle public trust and efficiency in government services, letting billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk make the case for a privatized, capitalistic government that profits off its citizens, instead of a government that exists to uplift workers and our communities,” according to the union.
Trump has made attacking the federal workforce a key part in his agenda, carried out in collaboration with the billionaires in his administration. The push for workers to accept buyouts is part of Elon Musk’s efforts to defund and gut certain elements of the federal bureaucracy, as part of the unelected billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). An email was sent out to federal workers on January 28 with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” the same subject line of an email Musk sent to Twitter employees, giving them a similar ultimatum after buying the social media company in 2022. In the email to federal workers, employees were told that in order to remain employed in government, they must end remote work, as well as live up to new “performance standards” and be “reliable, loyal and trustworthy.”
Many have raised the alarm of Musk gaining more and more power within the government. Thousands rallied outside of the US Treasury Department in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, February 4, denouncing Musk’s new access to Treasury Department human resources computer systems, which contain the data of millions of federal workers. Protesters held signs with slogans such as “Stop Musk’s takeover”. The Treasury Department recently gave Musk access to the vast federal payment system, which is a sensitive operation with very limited access given to career civil servants, as well as data including the Social Security numbers of most taxpayers. According to reports, Musk’s aides have locked some of these career civil servants themselves out of these systems.
Trump has also made a concerted attack on civil rights, issuing a memo during his first week in office that ordered the Department of Justice to pause all civil rights litigation, including lawsuits against police, government agencies, or corporations. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is now frozen, which is tasked with enforcing the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, military status, or national origin. The DOJ must now suspend “consent decrees,” which are mandates for police reform in police departments which have proven to be notoriously racist and violent. Trump also pardoned two police officers in Washington, DC, who were involved in the killing of a 20 year-old Black man, Karon Hylton-Brown.
Black workers under attack
At many turns, Trump has explicitly attacked diversity within the federal workforce, banning all federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) programs immediately after taking office. Trump’s broad attacks against federal employees, however, can also be understood as an attack against a bastion of job security for Black workers in particular. According to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report from fiscal year 2020, Black women made up 11.7% of the federal workforce, almost double their participation in the rest of the labor force. A report from the Government Accountability Office found that in fiscal year 2021, “representation for historically disadvantaged racial groups in the federal workforce was higher than that in the 2021 civilian labor force.”
Workers fight back
Workers themselves have begun to fight back against Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce. Labor unions representing federal employees, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), have filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s reinstatement of Schedule F. Schedule F is a job classification which reclassifies thousands of federal employees, making them easier to fire if they do not show sufficient loyalty to the president, some critics say. Together, the unions aim to “stop the efforts to fire hundreds of thousands of experienced, hard-working Americans who have dedicated their careers to serving their country and prevent these career civil servants from being replaced with unqualified political flunkies loyal to the president, but not the law or Constitution,” according to AFGE National President Everett Kelley.
