Unions Warn Members Not To Trust Musk’s Masked Severance Promises – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 2nd February 2025, 12:23 am

The Trump administration has let go hundreds of federal employees, including the removal of as many as 17 inspectors general, whose job is to conduct objective audits of federal agencies and promote efficiency. Emily Davies, Jeff Stein, and Faiz Siddiqui of the Washington Post reported this week that a proposal emailed to many of the 2.3 million people who work for the federal government offered them a severance package — which seems to have been a surprise to the White House.

The memo came from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), now run by Elon Musk’s team. The email had the same title as one Musk sent to Twitter employees when he took over that company in 2022. Indeed, it would be hard to argue that Musk wasn’t intimately involved with the severance decree when the subject line was the same as his buyout offer to Twitter employees.

Musk has brought in a team of employees to the OPM who have already worked for him at one of his various other corporations, like Tesla, The Boring Company, and SpaceX. They’re charged with determining where cuts to existing federal programs and departments can be made.

As the New York Times relates, the severance offer conflicts with federal law that limits administrative leave, ethics policies that prohibit government workers from holding a private job, and provisions in union contracts aimed at protecting the civil service from political interference and pressure.

Federal employee unions and attorneys are urging government workers not to accept the offer.

The employees under attack are not amused. They’ve been posting ferociously on Reddit with vows to “make these goons as frustrated as possible.” One wrote, “It took me 10 years of applying and 20 years experience in my field to get here. I will not be pushed out by two billionaire trust funds babies. I’M NOT LEAVING!” The prevalent sentiment seemed that gutting federal programs and services that generations of working-class people have fought so hard to secure is not only wrong but illegal.

Meanwhile, Musk posted on X that this offer was merely a “fork in the road.” His email to federal employees demanded that they be “reliable, loyal, trustworthy” and “strive for excellence.” Heil, Elon!

“This ‘fork’ thing is not a buyout,” Jim Eisenmann, who represents federal employees with Alden Law Group, told WGBH. “It’s not based on any law or regulation or anything really other than an idea they cooked up to get federal employees out of the government.”

Dana Hull, Sarah McBride, and Kurt Wagner wrote an article on Bloomberg earlier this week in which they remind readers that “placing urgency over financial discipline is a trait that’s characterized Musk throughout his career.” They cite Musk’s firing of many Supercharger division employees, only to hire most back; ripping out an extensive automation system; falsely identifying redundancy in Twitter data centers; and shipping tires from the Czech Republic for the Tesla Model S, among others.

Yesterday, on the day a tragedy of a collision between a jet and a military helicopter was becoming apparent, Federal Aviation Administration employees received an email from the OPM urging them to resign from their jobs. Distasteful and disrespectful? You bet. Threatening to airline passenger safety? Oh, yeah. Refuted by Trump’s Republican Congressional supporters? Nope — not a whisper.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 federal government and Washington, DC, workers, said Trump’s goal to offer severance packages to federal employees was to create chaos. AFGE national president Everett Kelley said, “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.”

The Connection between Unions and Climate Action

As a result of human economic activity, the planet confronts a climate emergency. Bold and conclusive solutions are required to avert the worst impacts of this crisis. Yet, because societies are facing unprecedented levels of income and wealth inequality, often drawn along the lines of race and gender, workers’ rights have become contentious, as the role of unions during the transformation to electrifying everything challenges existing fossil capitalism power structures.

As the Center for Climate Engagement relates, climate change and employment are closely linked. The physical impacts of climate change can have significant impacts on individual workers and also “pose systemic risks to economies through reduced labor productivity.”

At the same time, policies enacted to address climate change will have “major ramifications on employment — leading to increased opportunities in some sectors and the need to retrain employees in others.” And the built structures of workplaces themselves produce significant emissions. Policymakers may disagree about the degree to which workplaces should reduce emissions.

Labor’s Rise and Continued Rebellion

The US labor union upsurge began in the 1930s in response to unsafe working conditions and continued on into the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Since then, many corporations have outsourced good union jobs to preserve outrageous profitability.

From their emergence to the present day, unions have undergone significant changes. However, they remain the most legitimate means of social organization to defend workers’ rights during the evolution to clean energy industries. Union density in states largely remains the same as in prior years, according to the National Law Review.

• Hawaii and New York had the highest union membership rates: 26.5% and 20.6%, respectively.
• The lowest rates were in North Carolina at 2.4%, South Dakota at 2.7%, and South Carolina at 2.8%.
• Public sector union membership in 2023 ticked down a bit to 32.2% from 32.5% in 2023.
• The percentage of private sector workers belonging to unions trickled down to 5.9% — the lowest percentage ever on record.

The Trump administration with Musk at its beck-and-call is following a playbook that’s old, worn, and effective. As Labor Notes outlines: they’re trying to instill shock and awe as a main goal. In this case, the scare tactic is all about the threat of severance.

• They’re creating confusion across federal agencies and the many state and local agencies that rely on federal funding, as well as across research and university systems.
• They’re planting division, pitting workers against one another by asking them to report on each other, or compete over who will have a job if departments are downsized.
• They’re instilling fear that even longstanding workplace protections won in union contracts and guaranteed under existing laws are no longer enforceable.
• They’re using a show of force and bravado to inspire hopelessness, making workers feel powerless to stop their takeover of all aspects of our government.

Yet unions have shown that there is power in the collective. Even with the recent election upheaval in the US government, it’s important to remember that the labor movement flourished in 2024. Workers across sectors and interests challenged wage ceilings, sought job safety and security, and looked to unions to represent their collective interests. Against great odds and other threats of severance, there were many big labor headlines in recent years — the Starbucks campaign, the UAW strikes, and favorable labor agreements at the Big 3 automakers are just three.

In light of the severance threats, federal workers organizing across unions through the Federal Unionist Network (FUN) are connecting activists to share information and strategies and make plans about how to fight. FUN advises its members to:

• seek out real sources of confusing misinformation and question whether new rules comply with existing laws;
• check contracts and share findings about the contract with co-workers;
• connect with co-workers and assure them they’re not alone and will find courageous support in each other;
• find unity of purpose when divisions threaten and use that unity as a starting point to build bridges; and,
• assemble people into groups, whether large or small, to alleviate hopelessness and plan for both the short and long term.