Workforce

Employee groups laud Biden’s anti-Schedule F regulations

Unions and management organizations alike applauded the Office of Personnel Management’s effort to at least slow a future Republican administration’s efforts to strip federal employees of their civil service protections.

Workforce

The positive impact of policy entrepreneurs in the public service

COMMENTARY | The rewards for entrepreneurial leadership by top government careerists are low. They shouldn't be.

Updated Workforce

OPM issues its final rule for Schedule F protections

The federal HR agency finalized its rule offering protections for career civil servants meant to safeguard against the potential reemergence of the Trump-era Schedule F policy.

Workforce

The MacGuffin of Schedule F

COMMENTARY | Plans to convert federal workers in policy-related positions into at-will employees leave the workforce dangling.

Oversight

MSPB political firing case raises new questions on Schedule F

The Housing and Urban Development Department’s 2017 firing of a probationary employee over alleged leaks was politically motivated, the agency tasked with enforcing civil service laws said last week.

Workforce

Politicians may rail against the ‘deep state,’ but research shows federal workers are effective and committed, not subversive

COMMENTARY | "Our years of research about the people who work in the federal government finds that they care deeply about their work, aiding the public and pursuing the stability and integrity of government," write two scholars.

Workforce

One agency’s Trump-era plan included stripping protections from 68% of its workforce

The Office of Management and Budget appeared to have taken a maximalist approach to the controversial job category, proposing to strip the civil service protections from IT workers, recruiters and even executive assistants.

Workforce

Trump’s civil service plans unsettle labor leaders at start of campaign season

Lawmakers and leaders of the American Federation of Government Employees warned that the former president represents a “threat to democracy” at the union’s annual legislative conference.

Management

That Time Abraham Lincoln went to a war zone to escape office-seekers

The front lines of the Civil War were a vacation compared to being literally stalked in Washington.

Pay & Benefits

Keeping an eye on Schedule F and other proposals to reform federal workforce and pay protections

COMMENTARY | Former President Trump's plan to convert large swaths of federal employees into "at-will" workers may be on ice for now, but he and other GOP contenders have proposed to revive the proposal or institute a more drastic one.

Workforce

Union coalition throws support behind OPM’s anti-Schedule F rules

A group of 14 labor organizations led by the National Treasury Employees Union urged the federal government’s HR agency to adopt its proposal to hamstring future efforts to strip feds’ job protections “promptly.”

Workforce

‘Neutral competence,’ partisanship and efforts to overhaul the civil service

COMMENTARY | One scholar argues that a radical movement to shift powers to the president would be disastrous for the federal workforce.

Workforce

Regulations aimed at derailing a Schedule F revival proposed by OPM

An effort to insulate the federal workforce from future efforts to strip them of their removal protections could accelerate an “existential” debate over the nonpartisan civil service system, experts said.

Workforce

Deconstructing the administrative state: At what cost?

COMMENTARY | Americans should be frightened by the prospect of a return to the spoils system, argue two scholars.

Workforce

Retiring NTEU president reflects on three decades in organized labor

Tony Reardon on Thursday handed the reins of the National Treasury Employees Union to newly elected national president Doreen Greenwald.

Workforce

What the United States can learn from Australia’s recent catastrophic failure to listen to career government experts

COMMENTARY | A hastily launched 2016 program to reduce overpayment of government benefits was plagued by “unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty,” an Australian commission later found.

Workforce

Sen. Kaine revives effort to ban Schedule F through the defense policy bill

This marks the second straight year that the Virginia Democrat has sought to attach a measure requiring congressional approval for new federal job classifications to the National Defense Authorization Act.

Workforce

Schedule F architects say the plan’s critics are ‘hyperbolic’

Officials behind the Trump administration’s abortive effort to strip tens of thousands of federal workers in policy positions of their civil service protections called concerns of politicization overblown, but espoused making all federal employees at-will.

Workforce

Feds Could Be Fired at Any Time for Any Reason, Under a Bill That Was Just Reintroduced

The bill also would abolish the Merit Systems Protection Board and threatens to reduce former federal employees’ retirement benefits if they file “frivolous” appeals of adverse personnel actions.