How should federal workers respond to OPM’s ultimatum?

WASHINGTON — Each week new orders for federal workers continue to roll out. But how should workers respond to the potential layoffs, buyouts, or ultimatums? The latest federal worker demand caught employees we talked to off guard.

“It was a perfect way to ruin the weekend,” one woman told us.

Each worker asked us to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing their jobs. But all of them said they got emails from the Federal Office of Personnel Management demanding all employees submit bullet points of what they did last week.

“You don’t know what the right thing to do is,” another woman said. “The fear of losing your job is just a big factor.”

After the order went out President Donald Trump’s “special employee” Elon Musk posted to his social media platform X that “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

“We really haven’t seen anything like this on this scale,” John Mahoney a lawyer who specializes in Federal employee law said.

“The golden rule of employment law is to obey orders now and grieve them later,” he advised.

On Monday, OPM backtracked on Musk’s order. But then Monday night, Musk followed up with another post where he said ignoring the email results in termination.

Still, Mahoney’s advice is the same: write a prepared statement. He suggested:

“I supported and defended the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same. I took that obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and I will and faithfully discharged the duties of the office which I hold, which include but are not limited to the following: (Then list the five things you’ve done last week) as well as other duties that were assigned. So help me God.”

“Every one of these folks has grounds for a lawsuit,” Mahoney said.

Lawsuits that Mahoney believes could become quite expensive for the federal government.

“I don’t think (the administration) is really thinking this through very well,” he said. “But the reality is it can bite him in the backside at the end of the day, you know, three to five years from now, and they have to cut checks for everybody to come back to work.