Federal job listings provide clues for next set of Schedule P/C conversions

As agencies prep for a reported second round of conversions of federal positions out of the competitive service and into the at-will Schedule Policy/Career, experts have taken to reading new job postings as tea leaves in an effort to understand the initiatives current and future scope.

The new job category, ostensibly for “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, and policy-advocating” positions in government, was formally implemented in June, when President Trump signed an executive order converting around 8,000 positions from the apolitical competitive service into the excepted service.

Employees placed into Schedule P/C are effectively at-will employees; they no longer may challenge adverse personnel actions before the Merit Systems Protection Board, and their whistleblower complaints would be investigated by their own agency, rather than the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

But since its initial implementation, it has been difficult to ascertain whom exactly has been impacted by the new policy. Thus far, the only public documentation of Schedule Policy/Career’s scope are the statements of officials, who have said 97% of conversions involved GS-15s or senior leaders (SL), and an appendix to Trump’s executive order listing various job titles by agency, along with a position number that agencies only use internally.

New analysis from the Partnership for Public Service examining more than 130 listings that mention Schedule P/C on USAJOBS, the federal government’s dedicated online job board, has found at least a dozen positions—or nearly 10%—tagged for the new job category at the GS-13 level or below. In some cases, jobs like airport screeners at the Transportation Security Administration were listed as Schedule P/C despite not being listed in the appendix, though the agency told Government Executive those were due to an administrative error and would be corrected.

Other job listings, including for a variety of posts at the International Development Finance Corporation, state that the agency has submitted the position to OPM for conversion into Schedule P/C but had not yet received approval. The Energy Department flagged some of its jobs as “potentially meeting the requirements” for the job category, while three U.S. Agency for Global Media positions are listed as “under review for inclusion” in Schedule P/C.

Brandon Lardy, the Partnership’s data director, said in an interview that a combination of the Trump administration’s “opaque” documentation surrounding the new job category along with the chilling effect created by stripping employees of their civil service protections has created a nightmare for transparency advocates.

“We continue to be concerned as we see this rollout continue to play out, particularly as it seems to be going beyond the bounds of the executive order and its intended scope,” he said. “We’re also concerned about the effect this will have on morale across the federal workforce with the fear of being classified into Schedule P/C and losing their protections.”

Ultimately, Lardy argued that the Schedule P/C tag will hurt federal agencies’ ability to attract qualified applicants to these positions.

“Especially when you take it in the context of the administration’s actions last year, particularly to remove probationary period workers from government, that in combination with these reclassifications and this new appointment type all makes it easier to be fired,” he said. “That does have an effect on who is looking to get into government, either as a new graduate from university or someone with a long career in private sector looking to shift into public service. Either way, someone would be pretty nervous to see that their position could seemingly be reclassified and lose the civil service protections that are often a draw for folks who move into government . . . It’s not a healthy way to recruit folks into an organization.”