At least one agency is making a renewed, less generous ‘deferred resignation’ offer to staff

The Transportation Department is offering a new round of incentives to push employees out of the agency, though the offer is significantly less generous than previous iterations. 

Only employees at Transportation's Office of Civil Rights and its Maritime Administration are eligible for the latest Deferred Resignation Program. The initiative was first launched with the backing of the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management and went out to all federal workers early in President Trump’s term, with most agencies subsequently offering a second round that proved far more popular. More than 200,000 federal workers eventually accepted the deal. 

Under the original proposition, employees were able to sit on paid leave for around seven months before separating from government. In the latest Transportation offer, employees will start their leave and separate by March 31. Employees must opt into the offer by Friday, Dec. 19. OPM signed off on the renewed program but Transportation launched the effort on its own volition, according to an OPM official. 

The Maritime Administration had 790 employees as of September, though 268 of them work for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and will not be eligible for the DRP. It was not immediately clear how many employees work in the civil rights office, though the Office of the Secretary that houses it has around 1,600 employees. The secretary’s office has shed around 20% of its staff over the last year. 

Employees will generally not be expected to work once they enter the leave period, though the department told staff they should finalize the details with their supervisors. As the Trump administration did for the federal workforce during the initial DRP rounds, Transportation encouraged employees to look for other jobs while they were in leave status. 

“The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,” the department said in a frequently asked questions document obtained by Government Executive, mirroring controversial language included in the original DRP offers. 

Eligible employees can also request early retirement benefits when they resign.  

Transportation staff outside the eligible offices said no communication went out regarding the new offer, but it was posted on the homepage of the department’s internal website on Monday. In previous iterations of DRP offers, employees in agencies throughout government said barrages of communications from leadership and threats of involuntary layoffs pushed employees to accept the deal. 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a department town hall earlier this year that reductions in force would take place at the end of May, though that timeline was pushed back by a court injunction that is no longer in effect. The department did not respond to an inquiry into whether RIFs were still being considered or to other questions regarding the new offer. Congress has blocked any layoffs from taking place anywhere in government through Jan. 30. 

While the Trump administration has seen 300,000 federal employees leave government since January, it included downsizing the federal workforce as a key goal of the President’s Management Agenda it released last week.