The Musk Email to Federal Workers “Fork in the Road,” a “Deferred Resignation Threat” and a Call for Employee Retention
We are associated with people who work at NASA and other places. We represent scientists, engineers. The people that prepare the subs and aircraft carriers for deployment to the ocean are represented at the Navy yards.
Shortly after Musk bought the company in 2022, a similar email was sent to the staff that said “Fork in the Road.” The email asks federal workers to resign by February 6 if they do not wish to return to the office five days a week and commit to a culture of excellence. The memo states that people who choose to resign will still get their salaries and benefits until September.
The subject line of the email to federal workers Tuesday was “Fork in the Road,” but Jim Eisenmann, a partner with the same law firm as the one representing federal employees, said it was not a buyout. The idea they cooked up to get federal employees out of the government isn’t the basis for it.
The email told employees they had until Feb. 6 to accept the deal, calling it a “deferred resignation program.” If you want to resign you were told to reply with the word “resign” and send.
The memo states that my employer will likely make adjustments in response to my resignation including moving, eliminating, consolidating, reassigning my position and tasks, reducing my official duties, and/or placing me on paid administrative leave until my resignation date.
The OPM was expecting employees to be put on administrative leave soon after they reply to the memo, according to an OPM spokesman.
He doesn’t believe there will be other things that will happen to them between now and then, such as being fired for some other reason or not being laid off.
Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE), went as far as to call the email a “resignation threat.”
“It’s written pretty clearly that if you don’t take this thing, this so-called offer, you may not have a job,” he said, pointing to a part of the memo that informs employees who wish to remain in their jobs that “the certainty of your position or agency” is not assured.
The Internal Fork in the Road: How the President of the US Department of Human Resources is going to implement new laws in social media aimed at reducing costs
In addition to NASA, the US Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, I fPTE represents tens of thousands of federal employees.
The memo excludes immigration enforcement and national security, but members in these areas still received the memo.
The new administration of President Donald Trump and his chief of staff, Elon Musk, has yet to start, but the US federal government is already implementing the use of social media to reduce costs. Like Musk when he took over social media, the Trump team is trying to reduce the number of people in government and make sure that they are loyal to the president.
“The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work,” reads the email, which was later published on the US Office of Personnel Management website. Employees will be subject to new standards as we move forward.
As the US Office of Personnel Management is taken over by Musk’s team, the news comes. After receiving a request for comment, Musk didn’t reply immediately. The Office of Personnel Management didn’t respond to a request for comment.
David Sacks is one of the advisors that Musk and his team used at the social networking site. After the acquisition, Musk laid off half the workforce. Sacks helped advise him on which teams and people would be cut.
Remaining employees got an email with the subject line “A Fork in the Road” two weeks later. Musk said that they would need to be extremely hardcore in order to realize his vision. This meant working long hours at a high intensity. He noted that only exceptional performance would get a passing grade. Employees were asked to opt into this vision via a web form. Anyone who failed to do so by the following day would receive three months severance, Musk said. The employees would argue that they weren’t paid their full entitlements. Musk was able to get the suit thrown out.
“We are all shaking our heads in disbelief at how familiar this all feels,” says Yao Yue, a former principal engineer at Twitter. “Except, the federal government and its employees have specific laws in terms of spending, hiring, and firing.”