Trump takes another step to make the federal government loyal to him

President Donald Trump plans to eliminate layoff protections for federal workers ahead of time, a move that unions warn could allow the administration to reward loyal politicians during mass layoffs.

The US Office of Personnel Management is scheduled to introduce the new rule on Thursday. The proposal would allow agencies to prioritize “performance over tenure and length of service” when making layoffs known as reductions in force, or RIFs.

“The proposed rule would make RIF regulations more streamlined, efficient, and merit-based,” the administration states.

But the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 government workers, says the rule would “gut” seniority protections and give agency leaders “broad new discretion over who stays and who goes.”

“OPM is facilitating politically motivated layoffs disguised as ‘performance-based’ decisions,” union president Everett Kelley said in a statement.

Over the past year, the administration has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of federal employees by laying them off, pressuring them to accept early retirement offers and, in some cases, effectively closing their agencies. It has also attacked union rights, seeking to eliminate collective bargaining for up to one million employees.

Several agencies have carried out mass layoffs since Trump’s inauguration, but there are rules governing how and when officials can carry out RIF, rules that unions say the administration does not want to follow.

The new proposal would deemphasize tenure and give more weight to performance ratings in determining who is excluded from layoffs. It would also exclude more job categories from layoff protections, expanding the pool of workers who could be cut.

via News

Although the administration says its goal is to make the process more merit-based, a former human resources official told Government Executive that the rule could actually have the opposite effect, making the process of determining who is fired more subjective.

Many workers say their performance ratings have been unfairly downgraded since Trump took office, believing it is a pretext to reduce bonuses or facilitate their elimination. The White House is seeking a separate rule that would pave the way for such a system by limiting the number of employees who could receive high ratings.

Yet another administration plan would reclassify thousands of workers to remove their civil service protections, making it easier to fire them for politically motivated reasons. Experts say the proposal would eliminate safeguards against favoritism and a “spoils system” that rewards political loyalty over skill and ability.

Unions and public interest groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday aimed at stopping Trump from moving forward with that plan. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, called it a “blatant power grab” by the administration.

“The union movement is not intimidated by this administration’s anti-union campaign aimed at silencing workers who refuse to fall in line,” Shuler said in a statement.