Thousands of USDA employees are planning to leave the agency through a deferred resignation program that could challenge the department’s ability to fulfill critical functions such as food import and export inspections.
Applications for the latest of two rounds of buyout offers closed on Tuesday. The department has not released the number of employees who had applied for the DRP offer. A spokesperson said Wednesday in a statement to Agri-Pulse that it was "reviewing and finalizing the numbers.”
Government Executive reported Friday, citing two unidentified employees, that at least 16,000 USDA employees had taken the buyout offer over the two windows it was offered. That would represent 16% of the department’s estimated 100,000 employees nationwide.
In some offices and agencies, the percentage of employees leaving could be higher. An employee with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service employee who asked not to be identified told Agri-Pulse that up to 20% of employees in Plant Protection and Quarantine took the latest DRP offer. PPQ has more than 3,000 employees, according to its website.
“Many people were afraid of being RIFed, especially newer employees and those who were fired in February and subsequently reinstated,” this person said. “We probably won’t know the full number for a few weeks.”
After noting that the department’s final RIF plan is due April 14, this employee said, “Nobody feels safe.”
PPQ “safeguards our nation's crops and forests against the entry, establishment, and spread of economically and environmentally significant pests,” according to its website.
The APHIS employee said the departures of personnel at PPQ mean “our pest detection programs are … cut to the bone, and the survey season is supposed to get started in a lot of ag states. Our ability to survey for harmful pests will be greatly diminished this year.”
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In addition, the employee said, “Many people at our Plant Inspection Stations are now gone. A lot of front-line officers for SITC (Smuggling Interdiction and Trade Compliance) are also gone. Baggage inspectors in high-risk places such as Honolulu and San Juan are also understaffed.”
The end result, this person said, “will be an increased risk of introduction of harmful pests and pathogens, including African swine fever (ASF), fruit flies, and many others. One introduction can be very impactful and cost billions of dollars to control or eradicate. Examples include Giant African Snail, European Grapevine moth, plum pox virus, or BSE (mad cow). If ASF is found in the continental U.S., our pork producers would probably lose their export markets for a while. It would be disastrous.”
Another source told Agri-Pulse about 1,900 people at the Natural Resources Conservation Service have taken the second deferred resignation offer. As of last October, the agency had a total of 11,709 employees. The source said they had heard there were 100 NRCS staff in Kansas alone who had taken it.
A union representative who works as a physical lab technician at the Agricultural Research Service’s in Peoria, Illinois, said 20 people at the lab of about 170, had taken the offer, but 15 more were considering it.
“At a minimum, we're going to lose 12%,” said Ethan Roberts, president of Local 3247.
Food Safety and Inspection Service employees also are leaving, which could impact meat inspections.
Paula Schelling Soldner, an FSIS employee and chair of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, said she doesn’t know the percentage or number of FSIS employees who took the latest buyout, and departmental administration won’t tell her.
However, she is leaving, knows others who have, and says it will have a “huge impact” on inspections.
Soldner, who as a union representative has been critical of FSIS, said he’s leaving because the administration, which does not recognize the bargaining rights of workers at FSIS and APHIS, terminated the contract with the union April 1. That followed an executive order that stripped more than 1 million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
When that happened, Soldner said she was forced back into a role at a plant as a consumer safety inspector.
“For as much as I have fought the agency, do you not think in your mind that I had a target on my back that if I would step an eighth-inch out of line, that they would come and attempt to terminate me? I had to protect myself,” she said.
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