The Trump administration is planning to make it easier to discipline—and potentially fire—career officials in senior positions across the government. It would affect about 50,000 workers. They currently have security on a par with tenure. It’s almost impossible to fire them, and if you discipline them, you put yourself at risk. The union might go on a campaign against you, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The change is a rule that creates a new category of workers for high-ranking employees. Those are the workers responsible for executing the administration’s policies. They are the employees who serve at the president’s discretion. This is the group that comes under the term “deep state,” the “saboteurs.”
Currently, when they face discipline, they appeal to a so-called independent board. That would end.
Office of Personnel Management officials said the rule is partially aimed at federal workers who impede Trump’s policies.
Right!
Federal worker unions worry that Trump’s advisers could use the new rules as a pretext to oust government workers whose political views are at odds with the president’s. That is a concern, but he can’t fire every federal worker, and they are almost all opposed to Republicans. However, as long as they do their jobs, they should have nothing to worry about.
2.3 million people are working for the federal government as civilians. It’s not a large percentage.
OPM officials said the administration won’t discipline employees based on their political party or ask who they worked for. They said the rule won’t be used to justify mass layoffs, adding that the administration will adhere to federal regulations that protect whistleblowers.
After OPM compiles the list of the employees who will go into this category, Trump will issue an executive order that places specific positions in the new category.
Shortly before leaving office at the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order that made similar changes to how federal workers are classified. President Joe Biden rescinded the executive order.
The final rule cites several examples of behavior that could result in disciplinary action, including leaks to the media to subvert policy. It cites an email from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission administrative judge to then-acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas and all EEOC employees, sent shortly after Trump’s inauguration, stating, “I will not participate in attempts to target private citizens and colleagues through the recent illegal executive orders.”
“If you’ve announced to all of your co-workers that you hate the administration…and then you perform badly at your job, and you don’t do anything,” Kupor said, “the fact that you said you’re going to resist all of your co-workers is something that could be taken into account.”
The Government Accountability Project and the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association sued the Trump administration last year after Trump signed the executive order that led to the rule’s publication on Thursday. The group said the administration’s planned move ignores a 1978 law that provides job protections to career federal employees and limits at-will employment to political appointees.
“It will be much easier for the administration to squelch dissent or to thwart the work of civil servants who are trying to ensure that they are performing due diligence when it comes to policy development,” said Love Rutledge, a coach for federal employees.
Federal employees like employees in the private sector are employed to do their job, only their defined job and not undermine their employers. Refusing to do or slow walking a legal work assignment that is against their beliefs is undermining their employer and if they work within the administration their employer is the sitting president. Private sector employees are fired… Read more »