Federal employee associations and unions are uniformly up in arms over the resignation request that went from the Trump administration to every federal employee. Among them the National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees, NARFE. For what it’s advising people to do NARFE Vice President John Hatton joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss more.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin And John, let me begin by asking, have you ever seen anything like this particular format for trying to effectuate, I guess, what is a mass reduction in force?
John Hatton No, this is completely unprecedented and there’s uncertainty around the legality of an authority being used to provide this offer. So in addition to people needing to weigh, assuming this is all legal and it goes through, people needing to weigh this decision and the costs and benefits of accepting it and the risks they’re taking one way or the other. They also have to consider the risks that the administration doesn’t have the authority to do this, potentially, and it may not be able to go through with and fulfill its end of the bargain if you accept that offer. So that’s probably the first most challenging thing about this. The second would be what do you do with your career? What do you do with your retirement? A lot of considerations for individuals when viewing this offer.
Tom Temin Getting back to that first question, if for some reason you say, okay, I’ll resign in eight months, but then some court case determines that the government may not pay you in the manner in which the original offer described, then you’d be kind of up the creek with no paddle.
John Hatton Yeah, it’s unclear how this will all play out. I don’t want to speculate on what a court case may say, how it may impact the offer if it does reject the authority, what other claims somebody may have in terms of relying on the offer? There’s generally speaking, that promissory estoppel on behalf of the government where they make the wrong offer and then you rely on it. But there may be other claims there. So I defer to lawyers looking at this with full legal research behind them on those opinions. But I think it’s enough that enough lawyers have come out and raised questions about this offer and questions about the authority that it’s not a slam dunk that it will happen the way it’s laid out.
Tom Temin Right. And later in the broadcast, we’re going to hear from one of those attorneys, Danny Rosenthal of James and Hoffman maybe has some legal answers here. And what are you hearing from NARFE members? What are they most worried about, I guess is their careers fundamentally?
John Hatton Yeah, I think it’s across the board. People are concerned I think if they wanted to stay in their career, do they feel like they have to take this offer or that they’re going to get fired later down the line through a reduction in force? Or because they’ve been reclassified into the excepted service and they now become essentially at will. So there’s a lot of considerations. Some people may be close to retirement, and so this will certainly adjust when they may retire. I’ve heard from people that are retiring in November, how does that impact them? And can they take this offer and retire as well. They may not be eligible until November. And there’s some indication that maybe there’s flexibility by the agency, but it’s not clear. So I think those retirement considerations are top of mind for a lot of people who are eligible. And then for those who aren’t or aren’t really close to retirement, it is really what are your other options in terms of a career, or do you try to stick it out and roll the dice that you’re not going to be eliminated from your position later down the line. And so that may depend on what you do and whether you think you’ll be more in the crosshairs or not. Certainly, if you’re in a DEIA office, the writing is kind of on the wall that they want to get rid of all those positions, but it may not be the case with other positions.
Tom Temin Well, if you resign now and take your eight months of pay or you choose not to resign now and it takes them eight months to get around to riffing you, you’re kind of in the same place because you’ve gotten paid for eight months regardless.
John Hatton Right. I think to the extent that people think they may be losing their jobs anyway, this offer certainly presents a little bit more security than if they are rift later down the line. Now, the rift process is usually complicated. Agencies, usually, from what I have heard, have had trouble just going through the procedures and doing it in the correct way. So I think the administration will face challenges there. And often there are offers for things like early retirement buyouts as part of rough processes and potentially severance payments there. So it’s possible this wouldn’t be the only bite at the apple as well. But certainly wouldn’t, I can’t tell somebody they should rely on that. There’s just an incredible amount of uncertainty facing federal workers receiving this offer right now.
Tom Temin We’re speaking with John Hatton, staff vice president of the National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees. And what about health benefits continuity? Because I think one of the biggest benefits a full retiree can have is continued access throughout his or her life to FEHB programs. And that’s another question. Do you have health care coverage?
John Hatton Well, if this is a deferred retirement. This is all new ground for us. And so we’re basing this off of what we’re reading, the same as other people are reading in the frequently asked questions. And the concept that if you’re deferring, sorry, not deferred retirement, deferred resignation. If you’re deferring that resignation to a later date, you’re still an employee of the federal government during that time. It’s a weird situation in this case that they’re not requiring you to work. So if you are classified as a federal employee during the time prior to the effective date of the resignation, you would be eligible for health benefits. If you decide to leave the retirement before the end of that deferred resignation period and you leave on an immediate annuity or postponed retirement. You’d be eligible for health benefits in retirement assuming you had five years of continuous coverage in FEHB. So people should definitely be taking that into consideration the health benefits they would get currently and in the future in retirement.
Tom Temin Right. In all of these conditions, whether you get your annuity or health benefit continuance, it’s all a calculus that’s individual to each person your age, your number of years of employment in the federal government. And as you point out, if you had at least five years of FEHB coverage, those are all variables that no two people really are in the same precise situation.
John Hatton Right. So it’s difficult to provide specific guidance. And I think we’re trying to put information out for our members. We have a we’re going to try to give them an overview of what legal rights they have, what obligations they have in deciding whether they accept this offer or what considerations do we have in the future under a riff. We’re going to try to, with Tammy Flanagan, people may know her as she’s one of the preeminent experts on kind of these benefits issues, kind of walk people through what they need to think about.
Tom Temin She actually did that yesterday on the Federal Drive. She’s the walking encyclopedia, let’s say.
John Hatton Yeah. And she’s really good at walking people through kind of thinking through the process in a way that I think could be really informative. And again, there’s no one simple right answer here. And so people are going to need to think about it hard, weigh the risks of the offer, weigh their risk for their career, weigh the financial considerations for their retirement.
Tom Temin It’s a cluster, you might say.
John Hatton It is a cluster. It’s a cluster fork, if you may say.
Tom Temin Yes. And finally, the unions are advising people, don’t take it, taking a little bit of a militant stand, whatever, from their standpoint. Does NARFE have any overall advice. Or are you a little bit more nuanced in saying consider your own personal circumstance?
John Hatton We certainly want to warn people about the risks of accepting this offer, given the legal uncertainty surrounding it. But I think we understand that everybody has their own individual circumstances and needs to be looking out for themselves and their family. And so we’re certainly concerned not just for the federal employees, but I think public servants and NARFE and people in this country should be concerned about what this does to government operations. And so some people may be so offended by this offer that they feel it’s their patriotic duty to stay in the workforce and continue to serve the American people. But I can’t put myself in the shoes of every single federal employee and what they need to do for their families and what they need to do there for their careers. So we don’t have a specific word of advice here. But I don’t quibble with the unions stance in terms of there are some real uncertainties about the authority here.
The post Reaction keeps thundering over the deferred resignation offer first appeared on Federal News Network.