Yesterday, on Friday, Trump signed a series of executive orders designed to ‘’reform’’ the civil service code and makes it easier for supervisors to turnover federal workers and disempower public-sector unions. (This is actually quite similar to what Scott Walker tried in Wisconsin, for example)
This is not the first time Trump has taken aim at government workers, though. In January of last year, Trump signed an executive order initiating a 90-day hiring freeze for the federal government and reduced recruitment efforts after the freeze had been lifted. Ultimately,16,000 government workers left during 2017 according to Office of Personal Management data.
So what do these new orders do, and how do they effect federal workers? Talkingpointsmemo reports:
- Shorten the length of time federal workers have to improve their performance after receiving a bad review, from 120 days to just 30.
- Encourage federal agencies to terminate poor performers rather than suspending them.
- Direct federal agencies to renegotiate their union contracts, and make those contracts publicly available online “so American people can see them.”
- Encouraging agencies to conclude labor negotiations in less than a year.
- Severely restrict the use of federal worker unions’ “official time” — which elected shop stewards currently use to mediate workplace grievances. Going forward, federal workers can spend no more that 25 percent of their time on union or other non-agency business.
- Charge unions rent for the use of federal office space for that “official time” work.
‘’Shorten the length of time federal workers have to improve their performance after receiving a bad review, from 120 days to just 30.’’
So, I have some serious problems with these orders. I’m fine with a merit-based system of employment, but why do we need to shorten the ‘’improvement time’’ by 90 days? This seems like another one those falsely-advertised GOP policies with alterior motives. The administration will justify it with ‘’we need better performance,’’ but we already know what their real goal is. The conservatives want to reduce the size of the government, and what better way to do that than to increase worker turnover? This particular bit smells like a scam to put more people out of a job. We know they’ll stretch the definition of ‘’bad performance’’ to justify firing as many people as possible.
‘’Direct federal agencies to renegotiate their union contracts.’’
This is probably another euphemism. In the Trump admin, ‘’renegotiating’’ probably is codeword for trying to sell public-sector unions the worst possible deal the federal government can get away with. Hey, but at least it’s online, so know we can see what’s going wrong.
‘’Encouraging agencies to conclude labor negotiations in less than a year.’’
Another way to reduce the bargaining power of public-sector unions. If the negotiations are rushed, then it is much easier for the federal government to get the least favorable deal possible out of unions.
‘’Severely restrict the use of federal worker unions’ “official time” — which elected shop stewards currently use to mediate workplace grievances. Going forward, federal workers can spend no more that 25 percent of their time on union or other non-agency business.’’
So on top of immediately restructuring union contracts and limiting the window for collective-bargaining, this part makes it more difficult for workers to EVEN participate in negotiations and tries to discourage fixing problems around the workplace.
‘’Charge unions rent for the use of federal office space for that “official time” work.’’
This is probably the most brazen part of the orders. This is just a way for the federal government to sap those union dues and starve them of funding, thus crippling the functions of the union itself.
Shameful!
Honestly, more people should be aware of this. Trump is taking Scott Walker’s ‘’teabagger’’ experiment national. Sound alarm, Kossacks!