Trump formalizes move of career federal workers into 'at will' roles
Key takeaways
- Those positions are among the highest-ranking positions in government, with some 97 percent of these reclassified federal workers in so-called GS-15 roles, the top level on the government s pay scale.
- Federal worker unions called it a clear attack on employees and an attempt to intimidate federal workers who will now risk their jobs in reporting any malfeasance.
- This is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons.
Why this matters: political developments that affect policy direction and public trust.
Schedule Policy/Career (P/C), an effort pushed under the first Trump administration as Schedule F, allows some 8,000 federal workers to be hired and fired like current political appointees, stripping workplace protections they would otherwise get under the Civil Service Reform Act.
An executive order signed by Trump on Wednesday seeks to move those workers into the new class, saying they would be exempted from the adverse action procedures that make removals for poor performance or misconduct so difficult.
Consequently, employees with significant policy-making responsibilities can stay in their jobs for years even if they perform poorly, engage in misconduct, or are unwilling to advance Presidential policy across administrations, making their agencies less capable of delivering for the American people, the White House wrote in a fact sheet describing those now in the schedule as having at-will positions.