Lawsuit challenges Musk "resignation" threat to federal workers

CNBC (Business News) ^ | 24 February 2025 | Dan Mangan

[zeestephen]

A newly amended lawsuit challenges a threat by Elon Musk to federal workers...Musk in a social media post had warned those workers to respond to an email demanding them to submit a list of their accomplishments over the last week, or face a forced "resignation." ...The suit in California federal court comes amid confusion and controversy over whether employees must respond to that email from the Office of Personnel Management.

[dpetty121263]

Musk is smart by keeping the Democrats off balance as they in reactionary mode...

[Zathras]

Yearly review is part of ANY employee in Silicon Valley.
It was never fun but you ALWAYS did it.

[marron]

I remember that after Katrina we discovered that hundreds of New Orleans cops didn’t exist. Musk is demanding proof that federal employees prove that they actually exist.

[ClearCase_guy]

Is it true that the Dept of Defense instructed employees to not respond to Musk’s “What did you do?” memo?

I’d be surprised if Hegseth didn’t support the effort.

[FlingWingFlyer]

If we are paying 2 million Government workers who cannot think of what they did at work last week, we’re being screwed.

[MCSETots]

Hakeem thinks “they’re” winning because they keep filing the bogus lawsuits in the courtrooms of leftist judges. But that is how the leftists think, as long as file these bogus lawsuits, they’ll slow down the DJT agenda, which, to them, is the equivalent of winning.

With any kind of luck, SOCTUS will make a sweeping decision to shut these obstructionist lawsuits down and we’ll get the United States we voted for.

And Hakeem will see what winning looks like . . .

[butlerweave]

Wasn’t respond to an email demanding them to submit a list of their accomplishments fishing to see if anyone out there in government was alive ? LOL

[LeonardFMason]

My company ended Remote Work when IT audited WHO was signing on to systems and WHEN they signed on. They were also monitoring what was going on in the system. They found folks who HAD TO BE signed in to do their work were NOT AND those who were signed on were registering NO activity.

Same thing here. Musk even said there is evidence that government workers were NOT logging into their email system.

[alancarp]

That's true: here is a copy of that email's text:

All,

DoD personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information. The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures. When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled “What did you do last week.”

Thank you,

Darin S. Selnick
Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary of
Defense for Personnel and Readiness

[MNJohnnie]

Liars

It said failure to response would be considered a resignation.

As usual the Dinosaur media is lying by omission.

[MNJohnnie]

No the FBI did. There is some logic to that since the FBI involved criminal investigation that they should not be talking about to anyone outside law enforcement

[mewzilla]

Now we understand why the left is flipping out about a simple email to Federal Workers. The fraud doesn't stop at the top. It goes far beyond. (The Mafia used to call these No-Show Jobs.)

[whitney69]

I think I’ll sue CNBC for starting their acronym with a “C”. It has as much precedence as their suit. Besides, DOGE can’t fire or lay off anyone. These people being terminated or layed off don’t work for DOGE. They work for the federal government thus they all work for the POTUS.

https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-says-doge-doesnt-have-statutory-authority-fire-anyone-2032914

wy69

[3RIVRS]

For a bunch of “lazy” feds, do you have ANY idea how much work it would take to have one ghost employee on the books for a year. Let alone hundreds or thousands as he seems to think there are?

[roving]

In my job, we had to keep track of everything we did. And how long it took.

[zeestephen]

Re: "DOGE can't fire or lay off anyone."

The email request did not come from DOGE.

The email request came from the Office of Personnel Management, which does have the authority to terminate federal employees.

My impression is that OPM is searching for employees who do not exist - or - do no verifiable work each week.

I do not think OPM is actually going to evaluate employee performance.

[XRdsRev]

Federal workers generally go through a management review of their performance twice a year. A midpoint review and an Annual review. So it is not like their performance is not looked at. There is a formal process that everyone abides by. Just coming in out of the blue and asking people what they did last week when you probably would not have a clue even about what they are doing, you are not their boss or in their chain of command or any kind of subject matter expert, at the same time bypassing their supervisors and management is unusual and honestly, not very professional.

[asinclair]

My entire career, I was a salaried employee. (Software development, and associated functions.) Even in my first job, at nineteen. From the get-go, even during the first week of my first job, I was required to submit a weekly report of my activities. Hours, project number, deliverables where applicable.

Now, frankly, much of this reporting was to satisfy company records requirement to get certain tax deductions over and above the usual employee costs. Deductions that Congress has passed into the [bloated] tax law, Title 26 of the United States Code. These weekly reports would be summarized by various layers of Engineering management, resulting in a one-page report to Accounting/Legal.

This was true for every company I worked for that sold physical products to customers.

Then there were the times I worked as a consultant. My bill had to include even more detail on what I was doing, what I produced, and tabulated my time.

N.B.: consider that a bill from a legal firm will include everything -- copies, paper clips, briefs, court time, prep and service of documents, and more.

Asking for one report is not what I would call a hardship. As for sensitive information, it's an easy thing to describe what one did without getting into details that would compromise national security or prosecutions. The letters did not say weekly or monthly, just the one-time deal.

As for DOD and FBI, I would ask if they did some kind of regular check on employee actions. If they aren't, then they are falling down on the management job. "I interviewed three subjects of interest" wouldn't give away the store, for example.

One word: bloviating.

[iamgalt]

You will notice this suit was filed in CA of course. We had a “what did you do this week” meeting every Friday morning at 9 a.m. It didn’t go well if you didn’t have anything substantial. Every Friday every week.