SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Four out of 5 federal employees live and work outside the Washington, D.C. area. They are scattered throughout the country, including Kansas City, Missouri, where KCUR's Frank Morris joins. Frank, thanks for being with us.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: Happy to be here, Scott.
SIMON: Kansas City's a regional hub for the federal government. How many federal workers are there?
MORRIS: We're talking about nearly 30,000 people here, Scott - many of them on edge this weekend. Of course, trouble started last week with an unsigned fork-in-the-road email, offering employees their normal salary and benefits for up to eight months if they agree to quit right away, threatening that they may be fired anyway if they pass up the offer, as part of Elon Musk's push to slash the federal workforce. Subsequent emails fleshed out the deferred resignation offer and ratcheted up pressure on workers to take it. Shannon Ellis, the president of the local chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union here, represents about 6,000 IRS employees here, and she says it's unclear federal workers who agree to quit will receive any of the benefits promised to them under the deferred resignation offer. She says these workers are stressed.
SHANNON ELLIS: Oh, my gosh, they're scared. They are so scared. I mean, I have people approaching me - they're crying, you know, what do I do? They're scared to death. They're just waiting, you know, for the next one, which is, you know, if I don't sign this, am I now terminated?
SIMON: Frank, a federal judge has stalled the deadline for taking the buyout into Monday so that a hearing can be held to weigh some of the legal challenges by labor unions. Does that ease anxiety of federal workers?
MORRIS: No. Many federal employees here don't feel safe at work or even at home. The email barrage is coming in lockstep with scathing public attacks on federal workers. Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, for instance, describes federal employees who work from home as lazy and taunts them to take the buyout if they, quote, "want to rip the American people off." Ellis says federal workers have been demonized before, but what's happening now, she says, is unprecedented.
ELLIS: We are painted as such villains, and this time, it's coming from everywhere. And honestly, I mean, we don't feel safe.
SIMON: Elon Musk posted that his goal is to cut the federal workforce with the buyout offer by about 10%, which would mean roughly 200,000 people. What would that look like in a place like Kansas City?
MORRIS: So a 10% cut here would be huge. The federal government is the largest employer in greater Kansas City. It accounts for about 2.5% of the total workforce here. A 10% cut would trim almost 3,000 jobs. Frank Lenk, director of economic research at the Mid-America Research Council, points out that that'd be about the equivalent job wise of losing a major auto assembly plan, so a real shock. Lenk says federal jobs pay more than average here, and that money comes into the regional economy from outside. So those wages make a big difference.
FRANK LENK: Overall, for every federal job, there's another job created in the metro. So they're powerful jobs from that standpoint.
SIMON: So for every federal job loss, say, in Kansas City, another job might fall away in the local economy. And, of course, there are a number of cities who have a concentration to federal employees, aren't there?
MORRIS: That is absolutely right, Scott. I mean, these workers are just spread across the country. Kansas City does have a relatively high percentage of federal workers. But LA, Atlanta, Chicago, many others have more federal jobs.
SIMON: Frank Morris with member station KCUR in Kansas City. Frank, thanks so much for being with us.
MORRIS: You bet, Scott.
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