Around 50,000 career civil servants would be reclassified as “at-will” employees and lose civil service protections.
The largest federal labor union in the U.S. said Friday that tens of thousands of federal workers could soon “have their jobs politicized” and be swiftly fired under a new rule proposed by the Office of Personnel Management.
Under the rule, an estimated 50,000 career civil servants would be reclassified as “at-will” employees, removing civil service protections and making it easier for the federal government to dismiss them.
President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, tech mogul Elon Musk, have long claimed the federal workforce is rife with “rogue bureaucrats” and is part of the “deep state,” pledging to dismantle the civil service.
Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, that reclassifying workers “will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”
“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the president, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” he said.
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said Friday’s announcement was the latest “in a series of deliberate moves by this administration to corrupt the federal government and replace qualified public servants with political cronies.”
“President Trump’s action to politicize the work of tens of thousands of career federal employees will erode the government’s merit-based hiring system and undermine the professional civil service that Americans rely on,” said Kelley. “Politicizing the career civil service is a threat to our democracy and to the integrity of all the programs and services Americans rely on.”
The new category for civil servants was originally called Schedule F, but the White House said it was changing the classification to “Schedule Policy/Career.”
U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Rep. Gerry Connolly, all Democrats from Virginia whose constituents include many federal employees, said Saturday that Trump’s proposal to “hire and fire these workers based on their politics, not their qualifications… makes us all less safe.”
The lawmakers have all backed legislation to protect the federal civil service from being reclassified outside of merit system principles without the approval of Congress, and issued a warning to congressional Republicans who have heard from angry constituents in recent weeks about the administration’s spending cuts through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“Anyone who cares about our national security, or receives Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other critical service administered by the federal government, has a vested interest in protecting our merit-based federal workforce,” said the lawmakers. “We have long fought for legislation to protect the federal workforce from this kind of attack. To our colleagues who will hear from their constituents if government services continue to decline because of this decision: You were warned.”
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