The union representing employees in the Treasury Department argues that tech billionaire Elon Musk's "buyout" offer for federal employees was misleading because in practice workers can't take the full paid leave term that was promised, Axios reported on Wednesday.
That's because tax season is here, and at least some Internal Revenue Service workers who opted to resign are still needed to process the volume of tax paperwork to get everyone's refunds sent out.
Musk is believed to have engineered the offer that went out from the Office of Personnel Management to employees across the federal government, as it bears striking similarity to how he handled the downsizing at Twitter when he took over that company. Under the deal, government employees can take a "deferred resignation" and continue to remain on government payroll for up to eight months, and be exempt from return-to-office rules and other new policies.
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However, the offer was vague about whether all that time could be spent as paid leave, or whether some ongoing work responsibilities are required — and Doreen Greenwald, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union representing IRS employees, made this clear in her criticism.
"Not only is this a clear case of bait-and-switch — they were originally told they would be paid to not work through Sept. 30 — but it proves that the terms of OPM's so-called offer are unreliable and cannot be trusted," said Greenwald. "We do welcome the admission, however, that IRS employees are vital to the agency mission."
This comes as the sheer level of control Musk has seized over vital government systems through his "Department of Government Efficiency" task force, including access to the code base for the entire Treasury payments system and the Medicare and Medicaid systems, has raised outrage from Democratic lawmakers and even some members of President Donald Trump's circle.