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On Elon Musk's ‘work log’ order, staff union calls move ‘‘Cruel, disrespectful’
Elon Musk, as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has led the effort to fire swaths of the government workforce.
Elon Musk's issued an order to all federal employees to “justify their work” or lose their jobs. Now, an employees' body has called the move “cruel and disrespectful”, vowing to challenge any “unlawful terminations”.
Everett Kelly, who is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), slammed the Donald Trump administration.
“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” AFP quoted Kelly's statement.
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Several federal employees told news agency AFP that they were advised by their agencies not to respond to the email and wait for further instruction, a recommendation echoed by the National Treasury Employees Union.
"I have so much work to do, I am not going to neglect actual patient care for this drama," a physician at the Department of Veterans Affairs, who received the email, told AFP.
Musk later appeared to downplay the requirements of the request, writing on X that the bar is "very low" and saying, “An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable!”
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‘Failure to respond will be taken as resignation’: Musk's email
According to an AFP report, Musk wrote,"All federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
According to a copy of the email provided to AFP, federal workers were asked to submit "approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week."
The email came from the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), with the subject line "What did you do last week?". The deadline to reply was 11:59 pm Monday, though the message did not say failure to do so would lead to termination.
(With AFP inputs)
