The Congressional GOP delegation is hard at work to make it easier to fire civil servants and reduce their benefits:
One major plan is being readied by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Utah Republican calls it “high on our agenda.” While details remain sketchy, it would likely mean big changes to the generous retirement benefits given federal workers, mainly by looking to shift new employees from a defined benefit into a market-based 401(k).
He is also interested in making it easier to fire workers who perform badly and wants to reduce the federal civilian workforce, which currently numbers 2.1 million employees, not including U.S. Postal Service employees.
— Roll Call
Meanwhile the Trump transition team has begun working on a list of “bad employees” at the Energy Department:
Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump are developing plans to reshape Energy Department programs, help keep aging nuclear plants online and identify staff who played a role in promoting President Barack Obama’s climate agenda.
The transition team has asked the agency to list employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules. [...]
Two Energy Department employees who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the questionnaire and said agency staff were unsettled by the Trump team’s information request.
— Bloomberg News
Politico interviewed DoE staff about the memo which was widely circulated within the agency after the transition coordinator asked several people to help answer questions:
“Sounds like a freaking witch hunt,” one former DOE staffer said in an email. “It is a remarkably aggressive and antagonistic tone to take with an agency that you’re about to try to manage,” a current agency employee said. Another DOE staffer said they felt that “some [of the questions] are harassment, some are naïve, some are legitimate.”
[...]
One of the questions tasked to DOE’s undersecretary for science and energy office, specifically, probes the agency for where cuts could be made if it were required to make a 10 percent reduction starting in fiscal 2018.
— Politico
In 2006, unions representing public employees raised concerns about pressures on staff scientists at the EPA to permit a group of toxic chemicals in agricultural fertilizers. That’s the sort of thing you can expect several times over in a Trump administration. Civil Service Protections exist partly to reduce political interference in roles that are non-partisan (for example studying the environment). In a 2015 report on Due Process in Federal Civil Service entitlement, the chairperson of the US Merit Systems Protection board wrote:
More than a century ago, the Government operated under a “spoils system” in which employees could be removed for any reason, including membership in a different political party than the President or publicly disclosing agency wrongdoing. The result of such a system was appointment and retention decisions based on political favoritism and not qualifications or performance. In response, Congress determined that there was a need for a career civil service, comprised of individuals who were qualified for their positions and appointed and retained (or separated) based on their competency and suitability. As a part of this system, Congress enacted a law stating that any adverse action must be taken for cause – meaning that the action must advance the efficiency of the service.