With each day that passes, more uncertainty is injected into the work-from-home situation at the USPTO. Now it seems the Office of Personnel Management is offering early retirement (memo dated January 28, 2025) for those who wish to avoid having to return to the office.
It seems that every employee of the USPTO now has an option, between now and February 6, 2025 (which I note is a mere eight days from now) to hand in a “deferred resignation letter”. This would give the employee some seven months of pay and benefits, running out on an effective resignation date of September 30, 2025. The memo explains:
Deferred resignation exempts those employees who choose it from return-to-office requirements.
According to the memo, this buyout offer extends to every USPTO employee other than “positions specifically excluded” by the USPTO management. This puts a staggering burden and time pressure for USPTO management to figure out, within the next few days, which “positions” to “specifically exclude”.
You can see a page on OPM’s web site detailing this retirement offer.
I thought they only have to “Type the word “Resign” into the “Subject” line of the email and then Hit “Send”.” Isn’t that the normal way to resign from a government job?
Paul Krugman thinks this plan is illegal: https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/its-a-scam-its-a-purge-its-a-scam?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=z0y7b
I have a friend (an engineer) who received the offer, only he would have to continue to work until September 30. The only inducement is that he could continue to work from home. Before Covid, he only worked from home on Fridays. Now, he goes in about once a week if he is asked to (usually when there is a special visitor to his workplace.)