At least one employee union head described the decision as such.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday morning that it is incorrect to describe a recent decision to offer buyouts to all federal employees as a purge.
On Tuesday evening, a memo released by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said it would start subjecting all federal employees to “enhanced standards of suitability and conduct” and warned of future downsizing. The email, sent to millions of employees, said those who leave their posts voluntarily will receive about eight months of salary but that they have to choose to do so by Feb. 6.
When asked about the memo, Leavitt told reporters that suggestions it is a purge of the federal workforce is “absolutely false” and that it is only “a suggestion to federal workers that they have to return to work, and if they don’t, then they have the option to resign, and this administration is very generously offering to pay them for eight months.”
“Six percent of the federal workforce in the city actually shows up to work. That’s unacceptable. We’re all here at work, at the office,” she said, referring to federal employees who have been working remotely or from home in recent years.
“There are law enforcement officers and teachers and nurses across the country who showed up to the office today, people in this city need to do the same. It’s an overwhelmingly popular policy with people outside of Washington, D.C.”
Katie Miller, who serves on an advisory board to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a special Trump administration department headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and tasked with shrinking the size of government—wrote on social media platform X, “This email is being sent to more than TWO MILLION federal employees.”
Responding to the memo, American Federation of Government Employees union President Everett Kelley issued a statement claiming that the Trump administration’s plan should be viewed as an attempt to pressure federal workers to vacate their jobs.
“Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” Kelley said in the statement.
“Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
Kelley, whose union represents about 800,000 federal workers, added that the number of “civil servants” has not changed in a meaningful manner since 1970 but that Americans are increasingly relying “on government services.”
The federal government employs more than 3 million people, which makes it roughly the nation’s 15th largest workforce. The average tenure for a federal employee is nearly 12 years, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center of data from OPM.
President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order mandating that federal employees return to work in the office and that agency heads take steps to “terminate remote work arrangements.”
A memo released by the OPM and the Office of Management and Budget days later said agencies have to submit detailed return-to-office work plans by Feb. 7.
Two months ago, Musk and former DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy penned an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal that laid out their rationale for implementing return-to-office mandates.
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.