WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bloomberg Law) — The Trump administration’s weekend demand that federal workers describe their job accomplishments or face termination raises legal questions about establishing new evaluation metrics by email and threatening employees for noncompliance, as well as practical concerns about what the effort will accomplish.
Federal employees across government agencies received an email Saturday asking for five bullet points of what they “accomplished last week” by Monday at 11:59 p.m. Elon Musk, who’s led the administration’s campaign to slash federal jobs, wrote Saturday on his social media platform X that failure to respond would be “taken as a resignation.”
Congress and presidential administrations have developed an extensive framework for evaluating employees’ performance, said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown University. That includes laws establishing appraisal systems, detailing what criteria should be used, setting consequences for poor performance, and governing reductions in force.
“This amateurish approach of Mr. Musk is completely contrary to the law and to common sense on how to measure employee performance,” Super said.
President Donald Trump praised Musk’s effort on Monday, calling it “genius.”
Federal workers can control when they resign and forcing workers to quit for not responding to the email would be tantamount to terminations in violation of their civil service protections, said Michael Fallings, a federal sector employment lawyer with Tully Rinckey PLLC.
The email from the Office of Personnel Management combined with Musk’s social media threats mark the Trump administration’s latest broadside against the federal workforce, following mass firings of workers and efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and US Agency for International Development.
OPM clarified Monday that any response to the request for job accomplishments is voluntary and not responding won’t be considered a resignation.
