NTEU president tells Oversight Democrats that workforce cuts and OPM backlog are crippling federal services

Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, told Oversight Committee Democrats that recent workforce actions by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and related administration policies have damaged federal operations and harmed employees.

"This administration has subjected these dedicated public servants to relentless, baseless attacks," Greenwald said, adding that DOGE "was run by individuals with 0 federal workforce experience who treated our government like a tech startup" and "launched a campaign of chaos and destruction." She said the office did not consult federal employees or their unions.

Greenwald cited several concrete impacts she attributes to those policies. "In just 1 year, a reported 317,000 federal workers have been forced out of government service," she said, and described a deferred-resignation program that "coerced thousands to quit or risk being fired later." At the Internal Revenue Service, she said, the agency has "lost 27% of the workforce," and customer service representatives are "down 22% just as the tax season begins." At U.S. Customs and Border Protection, she said officers are being reassigned from ports of entry to unrelated missions, which she called a compromise to both border security and economic growth.

Greenwald also accused the administration of moving to shrink the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau workforce and "abandon[ing] settlements that would have returned $19,000,000,000 to defrauded consumers," and reversing efforts to cap credit card and overdraft fees.

She described what she called a retirement-processing crisis at the Office of Personnel Management: "Nearly 50,000 retirement applications are backlogged at OPM," she said, "4 times the normal level," with some retirees waiting "6 to 9 months for their first annuity payment." Greenwald said delayed retirements and payments have caused some employees to face foreclosure or lose health care benefits.

To remedy those harms, Greenwald laid out near- and longer-term steps. She urged Congress to restore collective bargaining rights, thanking members of the House who passed the Protecting America's Workforce Act and calling on the Senate to act. She asked that the administration "undo the damages caused by DOGE," halt further dismantling efforts, and surge resources to OPM to clear the retirement backlog. She also recommended statutory and administrative reforms to protect the civil service, "prevent the conversion to schedule p permanently, and strengthen due process protections," and highlighted the FAIR Act, reintroduced by Representative Walkinshaw and Senator Schatz, which she said "would provide a much needed average 4.1% pay raise in 2027."

Greenwald closed by stressing that federal employees continue to serve despite the pressures and urged lawmakers, unions, and the public to work together to rebuild the civil service.

The testimony did not include formal votes or agency responses in the hearing record; Greenwald framed her remarks as a set of claims and recommendations for the committee and Congress to consider.