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Updated: Monday, March 10 at 5:07 p.m. ET
Health and Human Services (HHS) Department employees, which totals about 80,000, were offered voluntary buyouts to resign from their jobs Friday night.
The agency’s employees received an unsigned email Friday night offering them a “voluntary separation incentive payment,” with a deadline to respond set for Friday, March 14, NBC News reported.
Employees were given an offer to leave their job for as much as a $25,000 payment as part of President Donald Trump’s government cuts.
The mass email went out to a “broad population of HHS employees,” landing in their inboxes days before agency heads are due to offer plans for shrinking their workforces, the Associated Press reported. Workers cannot start opting in until Monday and have until 5 p.m. on Friday to submit a response for the so-called voluntary separation offer, AP reported.
The email was sent to staff across the department, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the National Institutes of Health as well as the Food and Drug Administration.
The Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment Authority, also known as the buyout authority, allows agencies that are downsizing or restructuring to offer employees lump-sum payments of up to $25,000 as an incentive to voluntarily separate.
Food and Drug Administration drug and device probationary workers were fired and subsequently asked to return, as Fierce Healthcare exclusively reported. Employees in those divisions were not offered the $25,000 buyout, first reported by Endpoints News.
Reviewers in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and Center for Devices and Radiological Health were all deemed ineligible, Fierce Healthcare confirmed. Other workers in the Center for Veterinary Medicine and Center for Tobacco Products, as well as certain investigators in the Office of Criminal Investigations were not given the buyout offer. Employees who participated in the deferred resignation program, otherwise known as the 'fork in the road' offer, are also not eligible.
March 9, HHS handed over access to a child support database from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team members , which contains personal income data. HHS civil servants previously rejected their efforts, but DOGE now has read-only access, reported the Washington Post. It is the latest successful takeover of government systems by DOGE—sparking new privacy concerns—having already accessed systems at the Treasury Department and elsewhere within HHS. — Heather Landi
HHS workers offered early retirement as high-ranking officials resign
Updated: Tuesday, March 4 at 11:06 a.m. ET
Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were told they could apply for early retirement under VERA, or the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, Reuters first reported.
Social media users began posting the messages they received Monday, underlining the ongoing desire for federal agencies to downsize their staff by any means necessary.
An online description of VERA on the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM's) website says it allows departments to remake their agencies through "substantial restructuring, reshaping, downsizing, transfer of function or reorganization." To meet the eligibility requirements, employees must have worked in the government for 25 years or be at least 50 years old and have served the government for at least 20 years.
Workers also received a second email from OPM asking them to respond to an email, very vaguely, with a list of five things they did last week. It's the continuation of an Elon Musk-led directive that has confused agency heads and supervisors across the federal government because of the sensitive nature of information that could be included in emails. HHS leadership eventually relented to the demands, telling workers to comply with the request as best they can, though unions have previously advised workers to ignore the emails.
Jeffrey Grant, deputy director for operations for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), publicly resigned from his position March 1, in protest of the firing of 82 employees at the CCIIO. He said the firings were not a reduction in force because they were qualified and high-performing individuals.
"They were hired to add efficiencies to our enrollment processes, making it easier for consumers to obtain and retain coverage and saving administrative processing funds," he said in a letter to Jeffrey Anoka, acting chief human capital officer at HHS. "They were going to work on writing and implementing the recently announced program integrity rule, a top Trump administration priority that is projected to save billions in program dollars. These are some of our lowest paid people who nevertheless have a huge financial impact on the cost of governing, which is the ultimate in government efficiency.
"As a career federal official and senior human capital officer, you had to know that what you were doing was wrong," he concluded.
HHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tom Corry also announced his resignation March 3, but he did not say why he's leaving the position or respond to a request for comment. He reportedly did not approve of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s response to a measles outbreak in Texas. Just two weeks prior, he said he was "thankful" to be part of the team to make America healthy again.
Trump memo directs HHS to fire more employees
HHS and other federal agencies have been instructed to implement more mass firings, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the OPM lays out.
This goes beyond the firing of probationary workers, which many considered illegal firings.
As has become common, the firings, or reductions in force as the Trump administration characterizes them, will be met with swift legal pushback.
The OMB and the OPM justified (PDF) the course of action by saying the American public voted for ending the “corrupt federal bureaucracy” when electing President Donald Trump in November. They said tax dollars are being spent on spurious program from “radical interest groups,” and agencies must develop agency reorganization plans (ARPs), in collaboration with Department of Government Efficiency team leads, by March 13 with initial cuts.
By April 14, agencies must submit another ARP with a “positive vision.” These plans, which must be implemented by Sept. 30, should outline long-term new organization flowcharts and hierarchy, proposed relocations of headquarters to “less-costly” places in the country, recommendations for mass firings, real estate downsizing plans and internal hiring processes so agency heads have “visibility and/or direct sign-off” on all job offers.
Departments are still under a strict hiring freeze. Once hiring is allowed again, only one employee may be hired for every four employees fired after a new “data-driven” process is implemented.
In addition to the “maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated,” the HHS must consolidate redundant offices and levels of middle managers, implement “technological solutions that automate routine tasks” so time is spent on more productive activities, close regional field offices and slash the use of consultants and contractors.
Agencies that directly handle healthcare or entitlement programs have special requirements. These departments must show their ARP will have a “positive effect on the delivery of services,” and the OMB and the OPM will review these plans.
“The certification should include a written explanation from the agency head and, where appropriate, the agency’s CIO and any relevant program manager,” the memo said.
Included in the guidance, agencies were told to downsize ownership of federal properties. This could complicate top-down instructions requiring all federal workers to return to the office.
“When taking these actions, agencies should align closures and/or relocation of bureaus and offices with agency return-to-office actions to avoid multiple relocation benefit costs for individual employees,” the memo said.
Departments must also pinpoint areas “not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations” and identify rules and regulations that could “speed up” the goals of the memo.
No public safety positions should be terminated as part of this memo.
The government began firing probationary employees this month. The White House estimated around 77,000 workers took the ‘fork in the road’ buyout, and thousands more were fired across the HHS and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Some workers asked to return to work the following week, Fierce Healthcare reported.
The memo says agencies must continue to “evaluate” probationary employees and remove underperforming employees. Probationary employees are often high-achieving and are only classified as probationary due to their duration of time at their current job title.
Statutes must be reviewed to ensure agencies comply with recent executive orders. ARPs should include the total cost savings from reducing the workforce and develop a process to gather congressional input.
Agencies are instructed to review the four most recent performance reviews and veterans’ status of all employees.