Labor Department Brings Back Staff Who Took ‘Fork’ Offer to Quit

Staffers who opted into the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, voluntarily taking paid administrative leave with the expectation of leaving their jobs, are returning to the US Labor Department.

Three current DOL employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Bloomberg Law that colleagues who took the Department of Government Efficiency’s “Fork in the Road” offer earlier this year have returned as full-time workers, after collecting their full pay and benefits for months without performing their job duties.

The agency’s internal website for processing employee IT requests also has a banner reading “Welcoming Back Returning DRP Employees,” according to a screenshot shared with Bloomberg Law.

The rehiring effort demonstrates the whiplash federal workers face when President Donald Trump’s directives to shrink the government collide with the demands of an agency’s day-to-day work. At least one other agency, the Internal Revenue Service, made similar decisions to claw back staff lost to the deferred resignation program.

McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management, declined to comment, saying individual agencies awarded deferred resignation in the first place, “and they can decide who is excepted from the hiring freeze.”

Roughly 2,700 of the DOL’s 14,578 employees agreed to voluntarily separate from the agency under the program earlier this year, although it’s unclear how many of those staffers have been reinstated. The DOL didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in April pressed DOL staff to take advantage of the deferred resignation program offer, warning in an email that layoffs could be on the table if not enough employees left the agency voluntarily.

The deferred resignation program was meant to encourage workers to quit by offering to pay federal employees their regular salary and allow their benefits to accrue through September if they voluntarily resigned from their position. Those who opted into the program weren’t required to work during that period.