Agencies have just one week to reclassify roughly 8,000 federal workers into a new job category that removes most civil service protections, a change President Trump ordered that has already provoked sharp pushback from unions, employees and watchdogs.
What the executive order does to Schedule Policy/Career
The executive order implements Schedule Policy/Career, a new excepted-service category formerly known as Schedule F, for career employees in “policy-related” positions. Employees placed in that category would lack removal protections in Title 5 of the U.S. Code and would not have the right to appeal adverse personnel actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Agencies were given seven days — until June 10 — to reclassify roughly 8,000 positions listed in a 200-page appendix to the order.
The administration also directed agencies to create a separate bonus pool to reward those reclassified employees and said the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is expected to propose new regulations establishing a governmentwide presidential award program for the job category.
How whistleblower and disciplinary procedures change under OPM rules
OPM regulations that took effect in March alter the handling of whistleblower complaints from Schedule Policy/Career employees: those complaints would no longer be sent to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and would instead be referred to the employing agency’s general counsel for internal review. Attorneys who study federal employment law say other procedural changes compound the shift: agencies would not be required to provide advance notice or allow a written reply before disciplining employees, and reclassified workers would not be entitled to see the evidence against them, making the category “the true definition of at-will,” according to Stephanie Rapp-Tully, partner at Tully Rinckey, PLLC.
State Department, Defense Department, and the opaque appendix
The administration’s 200-page appendix lists positions by agency and subcomponent with internal position codes, but the precise scope remains unclear. The State Department emailed employees that President Trump placed 100 positions into Schedule Policy/Career with the order and said affected employees “will be notified by the Bureau of Human Resources within seven work days.” The State Department email asserted that “these roles remain career positions and will continue to be filled through merit-based hiring procedures.”
An unnamed Department of Defense employee who spoke on background said their supervisors—not themselves—are set for reclassification, and that those supervisors do not “influence policy.” The employee described first-line supervisors as responsible for oversight of projects, hiring and evaluating direct reports and executing disciplinary actions, and said they have “ZERO authority to establish policy.”
Response from unions, watchdogs, and litigation status
Federal employee unions and good-government organizations reacted swiftly. The National Treasury Employees Union’s National President Doreen Greenwald said, “The administration continues to focus on trying to strip federal workers of the rights that Congress gave them instead of letting them do the jobs that the American people count on them to do.” Greenwald said the litigation surrounding the initiative will resume and that NTEU intends to “aggressively pursue” those cases.
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, warned that workers “who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement” will now be afraid to speak out, calling the change “a disservice to them and to the millions of Americans who rely on the federal government every day.” Federal employee unions filed multiple lawsuits challenging the legality of Schedule Policy/Career last year; those suits were effectively held dormant until the policy’s implementation.
What this means for federal employees, agency HR, and the courts
- Federal employees and unions: Expect renewed litigation and efforts to document reclassifications. Protect Democracy has solicited employees whose jobs appear in the appendix to provide information about position duties to better ascertain the initiative’s scope.
- Agency human resources and supervisors: Agencies must complete reclassifications within a week and set up a bonus pool and award program; they will also be the internal gatekeepers for whistleblower referrals under the OPM rule effective in March.
- The courts and litigants: Lawyers note that individual employees generally cannot bring a challenge until they have suffered an adverse action. As Stephanie Rapp-Tully explained, “For an individual to bring an action, they have to have suffered a harm.” Unions, however, are positioned to press the pending legal claims now that implementation has begun.
The administration claims that 97% of those affected occupy GS-15 or Senior Leader pay grades, but observers note the appendix’s internal coding and the pace of the directive leave that assertion murky. With agencies instructed to reclassify positions by June 10 and OPM poised to propose award regulations, the immediate next moves are procedural: notifications to employees, internal handling of whistleblower claims, and the likely resumption of litigation challenging the authority and legality of Schedule Policy/Career.
NextGov/FCW reporter David DiMolfetta contributed to this report.
