Agencies to deliver large-scale RIF plans in two weeks

The Trump administration has given federal agencies until March 13 to deliver their plans to dramatically slash their workforces through layoffs as the Trump administration moves to the second phase of its initiative to cut federal employees. 

The plans will focus on the “maximum elimination” of functions not required by law, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought and Office of Personnel Management acting Director Charles Ezell said in new guidance on Wednesday, and include a resulting "significant reduction” in employees. As a starting point for the cuts, Vought and Ezell said, agencies should focus on employees whose jobs are not required in statute and who face furloughs in government shutdowns—typically around one-third of the federal workforce, or 700,000 employees. 

“Pursuant to the president’s direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions,” Vought and Ezell said. 

Some agencies are already moving forward with their reductions in force. OPM itself, the General Services Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development have already sent out RIF notices to thousands of employees, and the Housing and Urban Development Department recently cautioned employees that layoffs are coming soon. President Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to slash 65% of its workforce, or nearly 11,000 employees.

OPM issued the guidance in response to President Trump’s executive order earlier this month requiring the cuts and for agencies to work with the Department of Government Efficiency to implement them. 

The layoffs will be separate from the mass firings of probationary employees across government—largely those hired in the last one or two years—which marked the first phase of the workforce reduction plan. The Trump administration will also slash agency rolls through attrition, as it currently has a hiring freeze in place and will replace that in the coming months with a mandate that only one employee is hired for every four who leave. 

OPM tasked agencies with eliminating duplicative program areas, consolidating management layers, reducing non-critical components and developing technological solutions to automate functions. They must also develop plans to eliminate regional offices not necessary for service delivery and to slash consultants and contractors. 

Under current law, federal agencies must provide laid off employees 60 days notice before the terminations take effect. They can request a waiver from OPM to reduce that timeline to 30 days, which Vought and Ezell are encouraging them to do. Agencies should also consider requesting buyout and early retirement authority from OPM, they said. 

In addition to the RIFs and attrition, OPM said agencies should fire their underperformers, continue evaluating their probationary workers and renegotiate their collective bargaining agreements to remove roadblocks to the cuts. Federal reduction-in-force procedures allow federal employees to appeal the layoffs to the Merit Systems Protection Board or, for bargaining unit staff, to pursue appeals through the grievance process. 

By the March 13 deadline, agencies must lay out specific plans for their RIFs including the number of employees impacted and a timeline for sending out the notices. Agencies can start the process before that deadline, Vought and Ezell said. 

Agencies will also deliver in their plans a list of all statutes defining their work, which components they plan to consolidate, which employees will be exempt from RIFs and a blueprint for discussing the efforts with Congress if required by law. 

They will then deliver a second plan by April 14 that lays out their new organizational structure, any relocations of offices, subsequent RIFs, collective bargaining provisions that stand in the way of their efforts, technology deployments and how cuts will improve services for Americans. 

Vought and Ezell noted that any agencies that provide direct services to Americans should not start laying off workers until receiving a direct sign off from OPM and the Office of Management and Budget. Any positions related to border security, immigration enforcement, law enforcement, national security and public safety are exempt from the cuts.