Almost 3,200 EPA employees — or roughly 20 percent of the agency’s workforce — have signed up to leave or retire within the next few months.
Official figures released Monday reveal that 2,617 staffers have applied for either early retirement or the second round of a “deferred resignation” program.
That total comes on top of about 545 employees who had taken advantage of the first deferred resignation offering in late January, bringing the total to some 3,162, according to a compilation that EPA press aides did not dispute.
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The looming exodus of rank-and-file workers is “unprecedented,” said Nicole Cantello, president of a Chicago-area American Federation of Government Employees local, in a text message Monday.
