Above photo: Hundreds of protesters gathered at the California Capitol in Sacramento to protest President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency led by MAGA megadonor Elon Musk on Feb. 5, 2025. Renée C. Byer.
They refuse to abandon their public mission.
Check out this heartening article that just appeared in The Sacramento Bee. It’s titled “Everyday is chaos’ California Federal Workers Aren’t Taking Trump’s Resignation Offer.”
The Trump administration is trying to push federal workers out of government, which will cripple the government’s ability to serve the public in many ways. But unions have been resisting and federal workers have been saying no thank you. A federal judge has extended the February 6 deadline for accepting these offers till Monday.
Here are some excerpts from the article:
“There was lots of confusion when we first saw it,” said Mark Smith, president of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1. Many workers reported the email as suspicious, thinking it was a phishing attempt. The email was one of President Donald Trump’s attempts to reduce the federal workforce. It came after Trump demanded federal employees come back to offices five days a week; reclassified employees so they can be more easily fired, and instituted a hiring freeze that union leaders said resulted in previously offered promotions and transfers to be rescinded. But after receiving the resignation offer from the Trump administration, federal employees in California have coalesced around their frustration.
The president of NFFE’s Local 1450 said the email is offering federal employees deferred resignation ahead of possible terminations and reductions in force.
In a statement, the Office of Personnel Management declined to share the number of people who had accepted the offer. The office planned to wait until after the deadline to share that number. The department said it did not have a target number for how many employees it hoped would resign. Various media outlets have reported ten of thousands of employees have taken the federal government up on its offer, but Beggs noted that figure is less impressive considering 115,000 employees quit federal service in fiscal year 2022, according to OPM data.
Two of the largest unions representing this workforce — the American Federation of Government Employees and NFFE — advised members not to take the bait. California Attorney General Rob Bonta urged federal employees to take the unions’ advice and “to be very cautious” of the offer. “It’s very insulting,” said James Mudrock, president of AFGE’s Local 1230, which represents airport security officers in California. “It shows a complete lack of respect or interest or care for what we do.”
The VA, with nearly 39,000 employees, is the largest federal employer in California. VA supervisors and clinicians who provide medical care, housing services and other benefits to veterans living in the state, said they don’t believe the government will be able to fulfill the promises made in the generous offer. The messaging has been unprofessional, insulting and harassing, said several VA employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. All of them said they didn’t know anyone who was planning to resign. “We wake up every day with a new email trying to tell us to quit. Why? We don’t want to,” a VA supervisor said.
After the initial email, OPM sent a second message encouraging federal workers to move from “lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
Smith, the president of Local 1, which represents VA employees in California, said his members were angered that the Human Resources Department of the federal government suggested their work caring for veterans was unproductive. Nurses, social workers and chaplains who work in VA hospitals don’t choose to work with veterans to get rich or have an easy job, he said. “Our members find purpose in coming to work here,” he said.