President Trump signs EO creating new classification of “at-will” employment for federal workers
Positions in the new Schedule F would effectively wipe out many of the protections against adverse personnel actions that most federal employees enjoy.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to create a new Schedule F of policymaking federal employees.
The order covers “employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating positions” and instructs agency heads to determine which current employees fit this definition and move them into this new classification, “Government Executive” reported.
Positions in the new Schedule F would effectively constitute at-will employment, without any of the protections against adverse personnel actions that most federal workers currently enjoy. However, individual agencies are tasked with establishing “rules to prohibit the same personnel practices prohibited” by Title 5 of the U.S. Code.
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The order also instructs the Federal Labor Relations Authority to examine whether Schedule F employees should be removed from their bargaining units, a move that would bar them from being represented by federal employee unions. The White House argued that the executive order is a necessary reform to ensure that federal officials can more efficiently remove poor performers.
“Effective performance management of employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating positions is of the utmost importance,” the order said. “Unfortunately, the government’s current performance management is inadequate, as recognized by federal workers themselves. For instance, the 2016 Merit Principles Survey reveals that less than a quarter of federal employees believe their agency addresses poor performers effectively.”
However, federal employee groups and government observers described the executive order an attempt to politicize the civil service and undermine more than a century of laws aimed at preventing corruption and cronyism in the federal government.
“The [1883] Pendleton Act is clearly in the sights of this executive order,” said Donald Kettl, Sid Richardson professor at the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “It wants to undo what the Pendleton Act and subsequent civil service laws tried to accomplish, which was to create a career civil service with expertise that is both accountable to elected officials but also a repository of expertise in government. The argument here is that anyone involved in policymaking can be swept into this new classification, and once they’re in, they’re subject to political review and dismissal for any reason.”
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement on Thursday that the executive order is “the most profound undermining of the civil service system in our lifetimes.”
“This executive order strips due process rights and protections from perhaps hundreds of thousands of federal employees and will enable political appointees and other officials to hire and fire these workers at will,” Kelley said. “Through this order, President Trump has declared war on the professional civil service by giving himself the authority to fill the government with his political cronies who will pledge their unwavering loyalty to him — not to America.”
Agencies have 90 days to conduct a preliminary review of their workforces to determine who should be moved into the new employee classification. This deadline falls on Jan. 19, the day before the next presidential inauguration.
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