Trump’s three executive orders impact federal workforce
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump moved Friday to roll back civil-service protections that federal employees have enjoyed for a generation, making it easier to fire poor performers, curtailing time employees can be paid for union work and directing agencies to negotiate tougher union contracts.
In three executive orders the president signed before the holiday weekend, Trump took his first significant steps toward fulfilling a campaign promise made to overhaul a federal bureaucracy he told voters was awash in “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The changes have been championed by Republicans who have sought to rein in the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy of two million, which under Trump has been gradually shrinking through hiring freezes and unfilled vacancies.
The trio of executive orders - which can be undone by the next president - could have a much more dramatic impact. Trump’s move immediately drew polarised reactions, with public employee unions casting it as an attack on civil servants and conservatives praising the overhaul as a win for accountability.
The orders limit federal employees to spending no more than a quarter of their workday on “official time” - paid time to do union business, a benefit Congress approved for federal unions four decades ago. Administration officials said the change could save US$ 100 million a year.
They require agencies to negotiate union contracts in less than a year. And they direct managers to move more aggressively to fire poor performers or employees involved in misconduct, limiting to one month a last- chance grace period for improvement that now can last up to 120 days. Agencies must also disclose details about an employee’s record to other federal offices considering hiring someone who has been fired or disciplined.
In addition, the orders upend a long tradition of basing layoffs on seniority. Agencies can now take performance into consideration, as well.
The orders also require agencies to begin charging unions for space in federal buildings they now use for free.
White House officials said their goal is to make the federal workforce more efficient and responsive to the public and to improve morale for employees who play by the rules.
In a briefing with reporters, Andrew Bremberg, the White House director of the domestic policy council, said surveys of federal employees have repeatedly found that few trust their managers to adequately address poor performers.
“These executive orders make it easier for agencies to remove poor performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used,” Bremberg said.
The president, he noted, called on Congress during his State of the Union address “to empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove those that undermine the public trust or fail the American people.”
Public employee unions said Trump’s orders amounted to an attack on federal workers and said they were contemplating legal action to halt them.
“President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades- old right to representation at the worksite,” the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said in a statement.
For their part, conservatives praised the changes as long overdue - particularly the order that will limit how much federal employees can be paid for doing union work on the job.
“There is nothing more galling to limited government advocates than public employee unions being largely subsidised by taxpayer dollars while using their dues payments to support politicians in favour of expanding government,” Rick Manning, who served on Trump’s transition team and leads the advocacy group Americans for Limited Government, said in a statement. Trump has repeatedly referred to federal workers as part of the Washington “swamp” he has promised to drain. But he did not publicly champion the executive orders Friday, signing them quietly behind closed doors. — WP-Bloomberg