As part of the US President Donald Trumpʼs government cutbacks, most of the 80 000 federal workers responsible for disease research, food inspection, and the administration of Medicare and Medicaid received a letter offering to resign in exchange for $25 000.
This is reported by the Associated Press news agency.
Workers must respond to the so-called voluntary redundancy offer by the evening of March 14. The email was sent to employees of the department, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration in Maryland.
The mass mailing comes days before agency leaders at the US Department of Health and Human Services are set to propose plans for workforce cuts. The department is one of the most expensive federal agencies, with an annual budget of about $1.7 trillion, most of which goes to providing health care to millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. has hinted at plans for major staff cuts and last year promised to immediately lay off all 600 employees at the National Biomedical Research Office. But he has yet to do so.
“I have a list in my head,” Kennedy said of potential layoffs, adding that some employees “made very poor decisions” regarding food policies.
The Trump administration, with the support of billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is trying to reduce the number of civil servants in order to reduce costs. In January, most civil servants were offered resignations with eight months of salary. Thousands of employees who were on probation were fired from various institutions. The other day, the NYT newspaper wrote that the US Central Intelligence Agency began to lay off recently hired employees.
- However, Donald Trump did limit Muskʼs powers after mass layoffs of civil servants. The American president emphasized that he wants to keep capable people in the government, not fire them en masse.
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