U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order changing job protections for some federal employees in policy-related positions. According to Bloomberg, the order eliminates job security protections for nearly 8,000 federal positions. If these workers do not implement or support the president’s policy decisions, they may be more susceptible to being fired.
The Office of Personnel Management’s initial estimate was much higher, saying as many as 50,000 federal employee May belong to a new category. That means about 2 percent of the federal workforce will be moved into a new category that now allows for at-will firing.
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The order applies primarily to senior federal workers, mostly GS-15 and above, which is the highest level in the federal pay system. These positions include senior agency officials, deputy directors, chief of staffregional office heads, and senior policy, budget, human resources, grants, and public affairs staff. Some positions in the Office of Management and Budget also fall under this change.
These jobs will now fall under a new classification called “Schedule Policy/Careers.”
Workers who fall into this category will lose several civil service protections. They can be fired more easily and, in many cases, lose the right to appeal to an independent review body.
The administration designed the change to give the president more direct control over senior policy implementation roles.
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The government said the change improved government accountability. Agencies often have difficulty firing employees for poor performance or inappropriate behavior, according to a federal rule cited in a CNN report in February. It argued that the new system would allow for faster dismissal of employees who do not perform their duties or resist presidential directives.
Scott Kupol, head of the Office of Personnel Management, said senior policy officials must actively pursue the president’s agenda because leadership is elected by voters.
“From our perspective, a lot of this has to do with accountability,” he told Bloomberg. “In order to influence the government’s policy priorities, we need to have people involved in these high-level decisions willing and able to visibly implement these directives.”
He also said the order did not introduce a political loyalty test. “There’s zero loyalty test in this,” Cooper said. “Nor does it interfere with normal whistleblower protections.”
Federal employee unions strongly opposed the order. The American Federation of Government Employees argued that the policy weakened the merit-based civil service and opened the door to politically driven hiring and firing.
Public policy groups have also raised concerns. They warned the change could reduce the independence of the federal workforce and allow political considerations to influence career government roles.
The policy draws on provisions in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which allows certain positions involving policy development or policy advocacy to be exempt from standard job protections.
A similar effort during Trump’s first term, known as “Plan F,” aimed at reclassifying federal employees, did not fully take effect before the end of his presidency.
(Inputs from Bloomberg)
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