JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The fork in the road is on hold. We are talking about the Trump administration's offer to federal employees to resign now and keep their pay and benefits through the end of September. Labor unions sued, calling the offer unlawful. And at a hearing in federal court this afternoon, a judge pushed back today's deadline to accept the offer until Monday. For more on all this, we're joined by NPR's Andrea Hsu. Hi there.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Hi.
SUMMERS: Andrea, tell us what happened in court today.
HSU: Yeah, so it was a virtual hearing in a federal court in Massachusetts. And District Judge George O'Toole started by saying, this is going to be quick. He said the court had just received a brief from the defendant, which is the government. So he gave the plaintiffs - you know, the labor unions - until close of business tomorrow to reply. And he said he was pausing the deadline for this resignation offer until Monday, when he'll hold another hearing on the merits of the case.
The lawyer for the unions then asked him to order the government to notify everybody about this delay because the unions worry that people won't know it's been paused, and maybe they'll accept, you know, the resignation offer in haste. And O'Toole granted that request as well, and then it was over.
SUMMERS: OK, so about the lawsuit - what have the unions alleged there?
HSU: Well, the unions have argued that this whole thing is arbitrary, capricious and unlawful, and I'll start with the unlawful part. The unions are basically charging that the Office of Personnel Management, which sent out that original email that was titled Fork in the Road - that that agency didn't have the authority to offer employees all across the federal government pay and benefits through September because, you know, it's Congress that holds the purse strings, and Congress hasn't funded most agencies past the middle of March.
SUMMERS: OK, so that's the unlawful part, but what about the offer is arbitrary and capricious, as you said, according to the unions' lawsuit?
HSU: Well, for one thing, the unions say the deadline was arbitrarily short. The Trump administration gave people just nine days to decide whether to end their government careers. And they also pointed to all the conflicting information the administration was sending people about this deal, about what they were actually agreeing to.
And one of the unions also said the offer didn't consider what would happen if a lot of people just quit all at once. You know, after all, federal workers do things like process Social Security checks and make sure our drugs are safe and keep track of international threats. And I met someone yesterday at a rally outside the Labor Department who brought this up. His name is Ottis Johnson. He's with the American Federation of Government Employees. That's one of the unions that brought the lawsuit. And here's what he said.
OTTIS JOHNSON: If they start getting rid of all of these federal employees, it will affect the American public because they won't be able to get the services that they truly need to continue with their day-to-day lives as well.
HSU: And Johnson told me, you know, everything that's been happening - the Fork offer, the layoffs that have been threatened if not enough people resign, and Elon Musk's government efficiency team going into agencies - he says it just feels like a hijacking.
JOHNSON: None of us have seen anything like this. They're coming in and disrupting the lives of civil servants that have been doing this job for years.
SUMMERS: Andrea, what can you tell us about how many people have accepted this offer at this point?
HSU: Yeah, well, last night, we were told it was more than 40,000, which is roughly 2% of the federal workforce. And today, the administration said agencies will still be able to process those offers to resign. But at the end of the day, you know, there are people who see this as a pretty good option, even with the risks. You know, some of these people are retirement age. And by the way, 5% of the federal workforce is 65 or older. And some of them, you know, maybe they're working remotely, and they don't or can't return to an office. It is a really personal choice at the end of the day.
SUMMERS: Of course. Well, now that this resignation offer is on pause, what has been the response from the Trump administration?
HSU: Well, the White House released a statement saying, we are grateful to the judge for extending the deadline so more federal workers can take the administration up on what they called a very generous, once-in-a-lifetime offer. And they've been insisting this whole time that the offer is legal. They've made the argument that nothing in the program requires congressional approval. Now, attorneys I've talked to disagree with that, but we'll just have to see what Judge O'Toole decides after he hears the case on Monday.
SUMMERS: That is NPR's Andrea Hsu. Thank you so much.
HSU: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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