New rule to be published in the Federal Register on Friday would strip job protections for 50,000 federal employees
The Trump administration is seeking to finalize its overhaul of the federal government’s civil service system through a rule issued this week by the office of personnel management (OPM) to strip job protections from 50,000 civil service employees.
Under the rule, the president would have the authority to fire and hire an estimated 50,000 career federal employees.
The OPM said it was reclassifying certain career civil service roles so agencies can “quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives”.
The rule also would change how whistleblower protections, meant to protect whistleblowers from retaliation, are enforced. Instead of the independent office of special counsel handling most whistleblower disclosures from federal workers, federal agencies would be in charge of determining job protections for whistleblowers in their own department.
