President Donald Trump has placed thousands of federal employees into a new classification, stripping them of civil service protections.
Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday deciding which government positions will be converted to so-called Schedule Policy/Career. It is a key plank of his workforce agenda and makes those career staffers picked for the category essentially “at will” and thus much easier for their agencies to fire them.
Democratic lawmakers, federal worker unions and public interest groups have long blasted the effort, claiming it will turn the federal government into a politicized patronage system staffed by Trump cronies. Administration officials, however, said Schedule Policy/Career is needed to hold policy-influencing civil servants accountable and swiftly terminate poor performers.
The reclassification is part of a wider campaign by Trump to downsize the civil service and realign it toward his policy goals. The administration has developed rules to have federal employees sign nondisclosure agreements, extend suitability standards, end certain layoff protections, cap performance ratings and weaken safeguards for probationary workers.
Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told reporters the administration needs people in policy-making positions willing to carry out the president’s directives. It doesn’t matter what political views those federal employees may have, he said.
“But if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and policy directives of the administration, then this provides a mechanism, obviously, for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will,” Kupor said.
Close to 8,000 positions across government will be moved into Schedule Policy/Career. A senior administration official estimated 97 percent of those jobs are at the GS-15 level or higher, while there are a few at the GS-14 or GS-13 level.
“It would increase their accountability so that the president can carry out the mandate that the voters elected him to implement. It would benefit equally Republican or Democratic administrations,” the official said.
The official added, “It’s for this relatively small slice of senior career positions that have a responsibility for either determining, making or advocating for policy in the executive branch.”
OPM previously estimated that approximately 50,000 positions in government — or about 2 percent of the federal workforce — could be moved into the new classification.
The president’s executive order is the final step for the classification, anticipated for months since an OPM rule went into effect in March. Positions placed in the category will still be considered career and nonpartisan but will lose rights to adverse action procedures or appeals, which would speed up the termination process.
The category, then known as Schedule F, was initially developed during the last days of Trump’s first administration, but few agencies complied then. The president signed an order on his first day back in the White House to revive the effort.
Since then, OPM drafted regulations for Schedule Policy/Career while agencies submitted lists of positions to be included in the classification. The administration made a significant change for this iteration of the category, giving the president, not OPM, the final say on which positions would be converted.
On Wednesday’s call, the OPM director said the new classification will not require “loyalty tests” or interfere with whistleblower protections for workers reporting misconduct at their agencies.
“We’ve also been very explicit that this is not a tool for doing significant reductions in force or layoffs,” Kupor said. “These are just individuals who will be evaluated based on their own merit, but this cannot be a tool to remove large swaths of individuals from government.”
Now that Trump’s order has arrived, agencies can begin recategorizing those positions. Some have already started, like the Health and Human Services Department that moved hundreds of staff into the classification last month.
The administration will have a fight on its hands regarding Schedule Policy/Career. The category is already subject to litigation in federal court, and Trump now converting positions could reignite legislation pending on Capitol Hill designed to block the move.
The senior administration official said that while the president could add more positions later if he chooses, there are none currently in the pipeline.
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