Posts tagged federal workers
Trump offers all federal workers an 8-month buyout to resign
January 29, 2025 // Of the 3 million federal workers, roughly 374,000 or 12%, work in the Washington metropolitan area, which includes the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and parts of West Virginia, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. The largest percentage of federal workers are employed outside the nation’s capital. Federal workers account for the 15th largest workforce in the nation, and their average tenure is 11.8 years, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Office of Personnel Management data.
Trump’s new Schedule F executive order is smarter, but could still backfire
January 23, 2025 // The American Federation of Government Employees said that re-issuing the executive order was “a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons.” The ink on the order was barely dry when the National Treasury Employees Union sued to overturn it.
Commentary: Biden Values Public Unions Above Public Service
December 12, 2024 // “It’s time for America to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again with people,” he said. “The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.” Yet it never happened. The White House issued various directives, and every political appointee I know was routinely in the office . But despite this widespread discontent among his own appointees, Biden never got the workers back. One reason is that civil servants overwhelmingly view the return-to-office push as a bad-faith political stunt designed to assuage critics in Congress or provide economic benefits to cities. The belief that regular presence in an office is beneficial, expressed by many managers in the private sector, doesn’t have much traction.
As Trump’s DOGE plans crackdown, Social Security union secures telework deal
December 5, 2024 // The agreement comes as the incoming Trump administration and its newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, vow to require federal workers to return to the office full time in an effort to cull their numbers. The updated contract deal locks in the current levels of telework for American Federation of Government Employees members at the agency until late October 2029, according to a letter written by Rich Couture, AFGE general committee spokesperson and head of the union’s Council 215, and viewed by CNN. The agreement was signed by SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley just before he stepped down to run for Democratic National Committee chair.
Thousands of Federal Employees Land Work-From-Home Deal Ahead of Trump
December 5, 2024 // Unions have been pushing the outgoing Biden administration to extend existing collective bargaining agreements with federal workers in advance of Trump's inauguration next month, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Some union leaders are urging the current White House team to issue an executive order calling for such moves.
US federal workers hope Republicans will curb Trump, Musk firings
November 22, 2024 // The U.S. government is the country's largest employer. While workers are concentrated in Washington, D.C., and nearby Maryland and northern Virginia, some of the greatest concentrations of federal workers can be found in areas like southern Oklahoma and northern Alabama, which are represented by Republicans in the House. The biggest federal employees' union, the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 750,000 federal workers, is also looking to Congress, said Jacqueline Simon, the AFGE's policy director.
What Trump’s win means for the federal workforce
November 6, 2024 // That’s because Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F, a controversial abortive effort at the end of his first term to strip the civil service protections of potentially tens of thousands of career federal workers in “policy-related” positions, effectively making them at-will employees. Trump and many of his former staffers have frequently bemoaned that “rogue bureaucrats” inhibited his policymaking power during his first stint in the White House. Though President Biden quickly rescinded Schedule F when he took office in 2021—before any positions could be converted out of the federal government’s competitive service—that hasn’t stopped Trump and his allies from working on the initiative in absentia. Both the Heritage Foundation and America First Policy Institute, which have organized dueling unofficial transition projects have endorsed reviving Schedule F, going so far as to creating lists of upwards of 50,000 current career civil servants to strip of their removal protections and threaten with termination.
Commentary: What would a second Trump term mean for federal workers in D.C.?
November 5, 2024 // Trump’s campaign has pledged to relocate 100,000 federal jobs out of the D.C. region. Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service – a nonprofit organization that assesses federal government efficiency – says it’s hard to put a percentage on how likely that plan is, but there’s a “real risk.” Federal worker Marcus Glasgow says he feels a little anxiety every presidential election. And Trump isn’t the first presidential candidate to threaten to cut federal jobs. But this year, Glasgow’s “more anxious than normal.”
Unions applaud ‘most pro-union president in history’ following Biden’s decision to end campaign
July 24, 2024 // As president, Biden instituted reforms aimed at rebuilding the federal workforce, both increasing recruitment at federal agencies and restoring rights taken away during Trump’s first term in office. Shortly after taking office, he rescinded Schedule F, an abortive—though not abandoned—effort to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees in policy-related jobs into the government’s excepted service, effectively making them at-will employees.
Court sides with Biden administration in dismissing federal employee union’s effort to eradicate debt default threat
October 20, 2023 // NAGE argued the debt ceiling should not stand for several reasons. Congress sets funding priorities, the union said, and a default scenario that requires the president to pay down some obligations and not others undermines that constitutional structure. Complying with the debt ceiling is inherently unconstitutional, therefore, unless and until Congress sets a roadmap for the exact spending schedules during a default. Similarly, the union argued, the president cannot simply cease making all payments during a default because the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from failing to pay its debts. The debt ceiling could place President Biden in an “impossible position,” it added, without legislative permission or constitutional authority for proceeding.